The Devil's Bane, The Rebel's Boon; For Dawn an' Gundarak

[crallbri]

Chapter One

       The Trouble With Unmarried Gundarakite Girls

     The weary winter sun collapsed upon the western horizon as the cruel winter night crept up through the mountains and valleys of Barovia.  The Gundarakite were as much a part of the land as the hungry howl of the wolves, the wind’s song whispering among the spruce and pine, and the terrible beauty that haunts the long winter nights.  Poriska Zsovosky, layered in sheep’s wool, stood staring at a solitary moon.  Illuminated by the moon beams reflected upon a blanket of fresh white snow, her heart shaped face was taut with worry and care.  Though short in stature her wide hips testified to the fact that she was heroic, having brought nine children into the world thus far with one more on the way.  What is less apparent though is that beneath this stoic and stern demeanor belies a fierce passion that rages under the skin.  Her heart is an inn with many rooms where loved ones come and go, where hopes for her children’s future and for that of her people are born.  
  
  But what Poriska Zsovosky feared the most under that lonely moon was that her eldest daughter, Gibrana, was in grave danger.  Gibrana had inherited her mother’s fierce passion, which has always worried her.  Poriska had learned out of necessity, having lived under the bloody rein of Duke Gundar, to temper her passion, to contain it within the limits of her own skin.  Obliged by local custom, Poriska married at the ripe age of thirteen.  Gibrana however, was already sixteen; unmarried and gone missing.  For four long days Poriska strained her eyes towards the horizon for a glimpse of hope.  If she was a religious woman, she would have knelt right then and there, in the knee high snow to pray.  She would pray that Gibrana would not suffer for a Gundark that never was.  She would pray that her daughter wasn’t swept up into Ardonk’s rebel army.  But Poriska did not and would not pray.  She wasn’t raised to entertain such foolish fancies nor would she teach her own children wrong.  She had tried her best to keep her children outside of the influence of the outlanders.  It was a blow to Poriska to learn that Gibrana had been led into foolishness by one of her own.
    
Closing her eyes, the moon disappeared with a heavy sigh.  Even in death, the living memory of Duke Gundar was taking its toll upon the Gundarakites. With a heavy heart she turned towards home as she could hear her oldest son calling for her.  “Ma’ma?!” he shouted with an old rusty lantern in one hand and the heavy metal door bar in the other.  “I am coming boy.”  Even with the sheep’s wool hood, giving her another two inches of height, Poriska appeared to be the child when standing next to her son.  Looking up into his face, she gave a resigned smile.  “Boy, tomorrow morning you are to set off for Zeidenburg.”  
    
 “Zeidenburg!  Why Zeidenburg ma’ma?  And who will help pa’pa take care of the sheep?”

     “Your brothers know enough now boy,” her eyes became moist with pride, “I really should stop calling you ‘boy’ yes?  You are nearly a man now if not already.  And learn from this boy!  See what happens when the young don’t marry as they should!  Your sister…!”  Poriska bit her tongue and shook her head.  “Your brothers, it is time they started to assume your responsibilities.”

    “But why Zeidenburg?  Why not Teufeldorff?  Adronk Szerieza’s rebels ar…” the boy paused not wanting to upset his mother anymore than she already was.  He lowered his head as he stepped in through the door, set the lantern down upon the rustic table, and slid the bar into place, sealing the door shut long enough for the sun to recuperate.

     Laughing abruptly, startling the other children in the small wooden house, Poriska reached up and grabbed her son’s cold blue ear and yanked it playfully.

     “Don’t walk on egg shells for me boy, I’ve brought nine children into this world so far, with seven of them still here.”  

     Letting go of his ear her face grew stern.  “The boy that Gibrana had taken a fancy too.  Well...” Poriska shook her head, “one of them anyways.  I spoke with his father today.  His boy be gone missin' too.  What’s more,” Poriska reached into her wool jacket and pulled out a pamphlet,” he found this in his son’s sock drawer.”  

     The other children gathered around to see the pamphlet, even though none could read.  Poriska herself could only write her own name and that of her children.  But what was plain enough to read was the illustration on the front of young Gundarakites, men and women alike, hoisting the old flag of Duke Gundark into the air with the rising sun in the background.  Their faces were so young, yet strong, bold, triumph, and most of all…proud.  Poriska, noticing her young children eyeing the picture with fascination, quickly stomped over to the wood burning stove and jammed the pamphlet in.  Turning around she shook a scolding finger towards them all.

     “None of you are old enough to remember!  None of you knew what it was like to suffer under Duke Gundar!  True, this Count Strahd is a strange man and his people spit on us!  But life is always full of suffering!  It is far better to suffer life as it is now as it was before!  You hear me!”  

     Taking a deep breath, she planted both hands on her hips and faced her oldest son.  A clear sign to the children that what was about to come was the voice of certainty.  

    “Boy,” she somehow seemed taller than she really was when she spoke in this tone, “you will accompany that boy’s father to Zeidenburg.  You bring your sister home boy.  Start packing.”

(crallbri)

[crallbri]

Chapter Two

That's No Raven

   Gibrana’s arms worked furiously over the washboard, pushing, soaping, pulling, squeezing the dirt brown water out of Mr. Ostevik’s trousers.  Her mind was frazzled, her show of good humor wearing nearly as thin as the worn homespun upon her back.  While her garments were bleached and of dull quality, one thing was indisputable; Gibrana Zsivosky was her mother’s daughter.  Her heart was an inn with many rooms.  But the squabbling among the Ostevik’s youngest children made her want to pull her hair out.  Pushing, soaping, pulling, squeezing, she took the trousers in both hands and gave a final twist.  The house was bigger than the family home she grew up in.  The Osteviks seemed wealthy in comparison.  While she was no stranger to small rooms full of hungry scrappy mouths, she longed more than ever for a room of her own.  

“Rodika!” Mr. Ostevik’s deep voice carried itself over the high pitched squabbling of children effortlessly,” what do I offer you a place in my home if it not to help with my wife’s duties when she cannot?  Where is my supper?”

Gibrana’s round dark eyes were two smoldering coals in a heart shaped face.  She responded through no small measure of self control meekly enough though.  “Yes, Mr. Ostevik, you are too kind. Right away.  Soon as I hang your trousers up so that they be dry in de’ mornin’.” Patience she thought.  She could hear Ardonk’s voice as if he was standing right there in the kitchen.  “The true revolutionary spirit is one of perseverance and selfishness.”  She wondered what horrible travails she would endure in the difficult years to come.  The work she had trained for these past few years had in some ways just begun.  A part of her was even anxious to suffer for her people.  And she was not the only one.  Others would be streaming slowly into Vallaki behind her so as not to attract unwanted attention and arouse suspicion.  But for now, she was fortunate to have shelter from the night.  And with a little luck she hoped to get her foot in the door as a barmaid in a tavern soon opening up near the Market.  She dared not depend on the Osteviks for long, she’d need to find regular work before Mrs Ostevik’s health returned and Gibrana would become a burden and reduced to a street urchin.

Gibrana quickly draped the trousers across one arm and with a grunt lifted the pale of filthy laundry water with the other hand.  Her short legs hurried out the front door as filthy water lapped up against the sides of the pale splashing her already dirty garb.  She watched her every foot step wary of snakes slithering in the tall grass.  After dumping the water into a small crevice and clipping the trousers firmly to the laundry line, she stole a moment for herself before rushing back in to set the table and serve supper.  She almost envied the cows, pigs, and chickens.  She felt she could be herself among the animals.  There was no need to pretend for their sake.  After too short of a reprieve, the shrill wining of a child broke in upon her stillness.  With a tired sigh, she set the empty pale on the porch, lifted up her shabby dress to her knees and sprinted indoors.  

Mr. Ostevik was sitting in a wooden chair that was far too small for him.  Hunched over his wife’s sickbed he placed a cool wet towel on her feverish forehead.   Gibrana went straight to the pot of stew, and gave a quick stir before the turnips and potatoes burned to the bottom.  A burned pot would keep her up all night scouring and likely be enough reason for the Ostevik’s to replace her until Mrs. Ostevik was well again.  Her little hands flew into motion as she quickly filled each plate and set it upon the table.  That was when she noticed it.  The letter that Mr. Ostevik had written and sealed in an envelope addressed to the Burgomaster, Mr. Ionelus.  She was supposed to have dropped the letter off with the burgomaster while she made her daily delivery of eggs to the Lady’s Resting Place.  She dreaded being anywhere near the outlanders, but it had to be withstood for the sake of the cause.  Without drawing unwanted attention she slid the envelope into her dress and called out, “Supper is served Mr. Ostevik!”  She stood there, the letter pressing up against the smooth skin of her belly, and made a show of patience as he and his boys took their seats around the dinner table.  Standing over them as they ate quietly, she filled each of their clay cups with fresh well water.  After a few minutes of watching them clear their plates and refilling their cups she decided to risk it.  “Mr. Ostevik, do forgive the interruption, but in putting away Leon’s clothes it dawned on me that I had been shorted out of a good two yards of fabric that I had picked up this mornin’.  I am not saying the good seamstress meant to, but in any case, would it be ok if I went to pick it up now?”  Before he could have a chance to reply she spoke on while filling each of their plates with a second helping of stew.  “I do be truly sorry, Mr. Ostevik.  But I promise to be back before two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”  Mr. Ostivich, chewing with a full mouth, looked into the adjacent room where he could see Mrs. Ostivik under covers.  With a sigh he made a sweeping gesture with his hand, speaking with a mouth full of hot stew.  “Be swift now girl, when darkness comes that door will be a’ lockin’ and won’t be openin’ til mornin’.  You hear?!  And stay clear of outlanders!”  Without answering she bolted out the front door, letter in hand.  

Night was indeed on its way and she had no time to spare.  She could hear the low hum of Bervis’ bees before she rounded the corner.  The strange little man watched her sprint past as he fanned smoked into the hives.  The Vallaki guards nearing the end their day’s shift, didn’t bother questioning her having become accustomed to the somber peasant girl going to and fro.  
   
Gibrana walked briskly along the edge of Old Svalich Road, avoiding the broken up cobble and deep puddles that made the way hazardous.  But broken cobble and mud puddles were the least of her concerns.  Her round dark eyes watched the path under foot as well as the road ahead, wary of outlanders.  Her heart began to quicken pace though for the two stories buildings blocked the last rays of the setting sun making it as dark as night upon the old cobble road.  The letter in one hand, she used the other to pull her worn homespun up to her knees and began to run.  As she rounded the bend in the road she could hear the fountain’s water churning and see the massive stately building looming over the surrounding wall and gate.  The sun’s last breath illuminated the gigantic building as the darkness of night flooded the smaller buildings and land below.  

The Vallaki guards on patrol outside payed her little mind as she appeared to be no more than a simpleton likely on an errand for her master.  Gibrana bounded up the stairs, her young legs taking two steps at a time until she came to the heavy wooden doors.  Looking fearfully over her shoulder she watched as the mountains to the west slowly began to envelope the sun.  Pushing the heavy doors open with all her might, she threw herself into the chamber, nearly smashing her nose into the breastplate of a guardsman.  
   
“Well, well, …well,” the guard’s reached up to take Gibrana’s little chin in hand, and turned her head to the side as if she were a piece of meat on sale at the market. “Sooo…what do we have here?”  Three other guards in the room snickered and laughed under their breath.  
   
“Nothing Sir,” her voice quivered, her words stumbling off the tip of her tongue.  “I bring an important letter from Mr. Ostevik to the Burgomaster, is all.”  Gibrana’s heart beat as quickly and furiously as a Vistani drum circle.  
   
The guard, turning her heart shaped face to view the other side, leaned in and sniffed slowly.  “Well, you look better than you smell, that’s for a fact.”  The other Vallaki guards didn’t bother to stifle their laughter.  “You know girl, I could help ya out a bit.”  He leaned in close, she could feel his warm breath on her ear.  “You know what I mean, don’t ya.”  He looked to the other men in the room and gave them a triumphant smile and wink.  “Don’t tell me you wanna smell like pig shit for eva'. A pretty thing like you.  Wouldn’t ya like to earn some honest quick coin and buy yourself some perfume?’ The man’s crudeness fanned flames of hatred that were already there.  She was sick of being treated as a vermin by Strahd's filth.  Nothing short of the blood of this man before her could put that fire raging within out.  Her voice sounded strange in her ears as she spoke timidly.  
   
“Sir,” she held the envelope up,” I am but a simple girl.  I do not hope for much.”  The guardsman leaned in closer as if he was about to bite at her ear, but then snatched the envelope out of her hand and walked back to his post.  “Be gone now!  Back to the pigs with ya!”  The last thing she heard as she bolted out the large double doors was the roaring laughter of the guardsmen at her back.  With her fists clenched into little balls of steel, her jaw clenched tighter than a smithy’s clamp, her heart burned hotter than a potter’s oven.  With her temper soaring, her hot blood pumping loudly through her veins, she took no notice of the sun as night quickly swallowed it whole.  
   
“Excuse me miss!” She came to a halt, her little hands and tiny chin still clenched tight.  A guardsman approached her with a gentle smile upon his fatherly like face that took her off guard.  Meekly, she lowered her eyes to the ground and braced for the expected abuses to come.  
   
“Night be upon us child, shouldn’t ya be safe indoors?”  His fatherly tone had almost a soothing affect which troubled her already troubled mind.  
   
Staring at the cobble stone she answered softly.  “Mr. Ostevik had an urgent letter for the Burgomaster…sir.”
   
“I don’t be caring how urgent, nothing is so urgent as to risk the night.  Mr. Ostevik should know betta.”  The guardsman scratched his beard.  “Tell ya what.  My shifts close enough to an end.  I’ll walk ya safely home.”
   
The flowing water of the fountain sent a mist that gently coated the two of them as they stood there on the old cobble.  Gibrana feared some trick was a hand, despite the man’s apparent kindness and sincerity.
   
“Oh…that be too kind of ya…please…do not trouble yourself over me.  I am just a girl" she replied, hoping he'd let her go in peace.

“Nonsense.  No trouble.  You know, I have a daughter about your age.” He smiled proudly.  
   
Gibrana raised her eyes for the first time since the guardman began speaking to her, but not towards him.  With a strange look upon her young face, she gazed up towards the open black sky.  The guard’s tired eyes followed her gaze as well into the pitch black night.  “Somethin’ the matter?” he asked.  
   
In a whisper that was barely audible over white noise of fountain water, she replied “Not ravens.”  The guard looked down at her after a minute with a confused look, wondering if she was perhaps dim witted, as she continued to stair into the night.  “Well miss, we best be moving along. Lets get ya home and safe.”  The two walked quietly through the gate doors and into the darkness that shrouded Old Svalich Road.  Gibrana avoided looking at the man as he spoke, occassionally gazing up into the night sky.

 “What’s your name miss?”
“Rodica, sir.”  
“How long ya been…” the man’s voice cut off as a sudden darkness fell between them and the street lamp up ahead.  Instinctively the man’s steady hand inched his blade from his sheath and used his other arm to sweep Gibran behind him.  Both of their hearts were near ready to jump out of their throats as their eyes strained to adjust to the sudden darkness.  Then with such rapid like fluidity, fiendish terrors rushed upon them.  The guard hurled Gibrana out of the way and threw himself sword first at the nearest fiend.  Gibrana could only scream in terror as she witnessed a whirling of steel and leather like wings with claws spin out of control in the dark.  
   
“Run Rodica!!  Run now!!"  One fiend fell in a pool of its own blood but another quickly took its place.  She had never seen anything like it.  All Gibran could see were strange clawed wings slashing away at the poor brave man until his sword was knocked to the ground.  But the man stood firm and assailed the fiendish nightmares with two fists.  “Now!!  I can’t hold!!  Go!!”  
   
In a terror, Gibrana fled down the Old Svalich Road as the cold night wind took no pity on her choked sobs and tears.  She flew past Bervis’s bee farm in a panic.  Reaching the Ostevik farm she threw herself at the door.   Taking a hold of the latch she lifted and tried pushing the door in, but not a budge.  Locked!  Breathing heavily, she leapt off the front porch, landing with both feet moving, and raced to the barn.  

Finding a blanket in the loft she covered herself head and toe as a chill rain began a steady fall upon the roof overhead.  The sheep and pigs below lay in quiet, as Gibrana shivered in fear head to toe.  The scene of the poor man being thrashed about in a fiendish fury by those hideous bat like creatures played over and over in her mind.  If she was a religious woman, she would have knelt right then and there in the hay and prayed for the sun to chase the fiends away.  She’d pray that the barn door would hold against what come might.  She’d pray for the daughter of the man who so bravely gave his life so that she may live.  But she did not and would not pray.  She was not raised to believe in such foolishness nor would she begin to now.  She was a Gundarakite.  And what is more, a Gundarakite revolutionary.  Her heart was an inn with many rooms, her passion a fire by which the lukewarm swarmed to like moths to a flame.    


(special thanks to dm dark fey)

[crallbri]

Chapter 3


Seamless Dreams



 
The sun, if it had any interest in the affairs of the heart, gave nothing away on its slow funeral march.  No voices were raised to sing a lament of any sort.  The jagged mountains to the west opened up as indifferently as an unmarked grave.   So little ceremony for the waning pride of day.  The emptiness of the frozen landscape induced a dream like state.  They could not put a finger on it, or find the proper words.  But they both felt it.  Some nameless quality was on the verge of waking.  Some new word was pinned to the tip of the tongue, dead for the breath that would not come.  It felt as if time itself was in waiting.  But waiting for what? Waiting for whom?

Life here in the lands of old Gundarak seemed too still to be real.  Where was the wild wind’s song among the pine and spruce?  Where was the hungry howl of the lonely wolf?  The moon waxed silent behind a cloudy veil.  Unnoticed.  Alone.   Only the sound of their labored breath, the hard snow crunching underfoot, and their heart’s warm blood thumping in their ears was what was heard.    

At looking at the two, you would think that the boy’s long legs gave him the advantage.  Gibrana seemed a child as she walked a few paces behind the tall Elfric.  His legs were lean, chiseled by the years of pastoral hardships.  Up and down the hills they’d go, Elfric, his father, and his brothers, tending to the flocks of sheep, season after season.  He hadn’t expected to miss the familiar voices of home so soon.  Fortunately, his mind was too preoccupied with finding a spot to settle in for the night to loiter long within the growing vacancy of his heart.  

Gibrana kept her mind occupied by trying to land each tired foot in the large foot prints left by Elfric.  Just sixteen, she was very much her mother’s daughter.  Her heart was a brothel with many rooms.  But unlike her mother, she saw no reason to temper the skin to contain the burning spirit within.  Passion was her nutrition.  The snow capped hills and frozen plains of the surrounding emptiness could sense this.  So vibrant!  So alive!  Raw and unrefined.  How could such a small creature generate so much heat?  In a single instant, the sublime emptiness and frozen silence could swallow her up, leaving no trace, as if she’d never existed in the first place.  But it did not.  It did not want to.  The Barovian winter held Gibrana Zsivosky in the palm of its bone white hand and marveled.  
 
“Elfric.”  It was the first word either of them had dared utter all day.  He stopped and looked behind him.  Her heart shaped face was veiled in shadow, buried deep within her wool hood.  He could just make out the shadowy contours of her round eyes, cheeks, and her little chin.  “Just one more hill.”  He tried to sound encouraging, but the words came out wrong.  Gibrana launched a frozen fist into his ribs.  Thank last year’s sheep for the extra padding.  “Just one more hill?!”  She tried to land a quick kick, but her wool boots were too heavy from snow and she nearly toppled over in the process.  Catching her balance, she planted both mittens on her hips.  A clear indication that her tongue was about to become her whip.  “Just…one…more…Hill!” She shook a fisted mitten at him.  “The snow be as high as my hips!”  Perched upon an old gnarly tree limb overhead was a fat owl.  It watched the two in muted interest as she continued her barrage.  “Just one more hill he says!”  Elfric turned around and strained his eyes.  Just one more hill and they’d be there.  He could see a black monolith jutting up against the cloudy backdrop of night.  There was just no winning with this girl.  Before he could get a word in edge wise, he was being shoved aside.  “You!  You’ve nothin’ but wool between de’ ears!”  Gibrana plowed ahead of him through the drifts of snow and up the hill, ranting the entire way.  Her tiny fist worked furiously as she surged forward, too angry to feel tired.  She only paused long enough to turn around to launch one more verbal assault.  “Well!?  What do you be waiting for?  For the snow to melt and the hill to level?”  He could have sworn he saw a smile crack on that heart shaped face but he wasn’t about to gamble on it.  

If she had been smiling, the smile quickly fled without a trace.  The ancient fortress loomed overhead as the two reached the hill’s summit.  The infamous Ashen Stronghold.  Gibrana did not know this though.  This was the furthest she had ever traveled from home.  Elfric however, being a boy, had accompanied his father yearly to Zeidenburg with each season’s harvest.  Despite such adventures, all he knew of Ashen Stronghold was that his father refused to speak of it or come too close for that matter.  Standing this close to it, he could do more than imagine why.  Black granite jutted out from the frozen ground.  It didn’t look like anything man made.  At least not anything either one of them have seen with their young eyes.   But local lore said it was built by Gundarakite hands of old.  In a way, it had the appearance of a casket standing on end.  An iron fence with gates hung crooked upon rusty hinges and circled the fortress’ foundation.  Thick groves of gnarled oaks stood guard around the iron fencing.  Neither of them could see where the top of the fortress ended and the sky began. Thick rolling clouds billowed silently overhead.  The old twisted oaks at its base appeared meek, frail, and withered under the ominous shadow of the once proud fortress of Duke Gundar.  Perhaps it was a trick of the mind, but the gnarled limbs seemed animated in the dark.  Crumbling and weathered chunks of granite from the years of abuse and disuse littered the frozen perimeter.  

Gibrana’s heart was in her throat.  Elfric’s too for that matter.  It took a dog’s whimper to remind the two to breath again.  Elfric kneeled down to scratch the sheepdog behind the ears. “It’ll be alright girl, I promise.”  She was a Mioritic breed.  Though he had heard some of the older folks call them Barac.  Elfric had made earnest attempts to make Loki stay put at home where she belonged.  His parents would already be sore enough with him as it were.  But Loki had picked her course by her own volition.  Though a dog, Loki was a female still and like most women Elfric knew, she had a stubbornness to reckon with.

Breathing deeply, they wordlessly set themselves to the task of gathering fire wood and setting up camp for the night.  Elfric knew that one could see the old fortress from the Crimson Road, which meant they couldn’t be too far from Zeidenburg.  He dug out a pit for the fire near the base of a hill.  The hill was on one side, the twisted oaks, mangled iron gates, and the casket of a fortress on the other.  Neither of them felt like talking.  Even Loki felt unusually somber.  Too tired and too cold to cook, they warmed hard bread by the fire and melted some snow to drink.  The three of them pressed their bodies together under a heavy wool blanket.  The coarse bread was surprisingly delicious despite the inhospitality of their surroundings.  The fire’s light blotted out much of their surroundings, which they were grateful for.  Out of sight, out of mind.  But not quite.

With belly’s full of bread and warm water, sleep overcame the three.  The fire crackled as they slumbered, pressed up against one another, boy, dog, and girl.  Thick black clouds hung lifelessly over the dreaming youths.  All was well and quiet until a dog’s pathetic whimper broke upon their slumber.  Gibrana and Elfic’s eye lids flung open.  Neither was aware of what they just heard.  Throwing the blanket to the side they sprang to their feet, eyes white with fear.  Something woke them, but what?  Elfric shook the blanket violently searching for Loki.

“Girl!” he shouted into the dark.  

A dog’s whimper broke upon the two of them once again.  Gibrana picked up the blanket and wrapped it around her tightly, grasping for anything to keep her anchored in some semblance of reality.    

“Where?” she whispered.  It was all she could think to say.  Elfric grabbed a burning limb from the fire pit and began checking the perimeter.  

“Loki!” he shouted, waving the flaming limb through the thickness of night.  But this time the reply was more a cry of pain than a whimper.  Their heads leaned back in unison, and faced the darkness ahead.  It was Loki.  And it was coming from the fortress.  Elfric charged into the thick of it all, the twisted limbs and rustic gates of Ashen Stronghold, with Gibrana on his heels.

[crallbri]

Chapter Four

The seeds are being sewn; A blue tinged feather rides the air.

Rosalia Ostevik dried her hands on her apron.  Its true what they say, you know. You don’t run the house and farm, rather, the farm and house runs you.  The idea was enticing.  Hire some extra hands around the place in exchange for shelter and food and maybe, just maybe, gain some leisure time for yourself.  But so much for that.  

Gibrana set the basket down as she walked in, cutting the night’s cold breath off as she barred the door tight behind her.  Her tiny feet were happy to slip out of the boots. Tattered, barely sewn together, and spotted with dried mud, the boots had character.  Rosalia hung her apron on a hook and went to greet her, an envelope in hand.  “Rodika, something came for you today.”  Gibrana turned around to see a devious grin grow upon Rosalia’s face.  As if certain of a mistake, Gibrana took a slow step forward.  “For me?  Are you sure?”.  Gibrana smiled bashfully, as she reached for it.  The wax seal was a rose red and still intact, with the letters ‘R.A.’ stamped into it.   “Sooo…,” Rosalia smiled mischievously, “from a suitor, yes?”.  Gibrana blushed and laughed.  “I do not know.  Maybe.  We will see.”  

   “Well, the man was tall, dressed real nice,” Rosalia winked, “and had nice olive skin.”

   Gibrana’s heart shaped face lit up like a jack-o-lantern.  Stammering, she spoke.  “I…I…I don’t…I mean…he is….,” flustered, she shoved the envelope into a pocket, “…he likely be no different than the others, you know, chasin’ his own tail a’ roun’ an’ roun’ like a dog.”

   The two women laughed until they heard Eval, Mr. Ostevik, clear his throat in the kitchen.  
   “Anyway,” Rosalia made a tired smile,” I’ll leave you to your letter dear.  If not too tired, or swept passionately off your feet, come join me for tea in a bit.”  

   Gibrana slipped into an adjacent room and sat cross-legged before the wood-burning stove.  Checking about to be sure that Leon wasn’t playing peeping games, she proceeded to lift up a floor board.  Her tiny hand, her skin calloused from work, reached into the black hole, and felt about.  She pulled a journal bound in string out.  The name on the cover was not her own.  Styr.  She put the journal under her nose.  It smelled nice, a woodsy smell, but slightly different than the forest smell in Barovia.  Strange she thought, like the strange woman who gave it to her.  She opened to a page, the paper thick and pulpy.  The alphabet was spelled out in thick black ink in two lines.  The top line was fluid and graceful.  The line directly below it, a string of mimicking letters, was written with an awkward hand, child-like.  Gibrana carefully broke the wax seal on the envelope, unfolded the letter, and concentrated on the page.  The letter had only two words:  Bulevard Natura.
   
Her heart skipped a beat, then sped up.  Her eyes darted back and froth from the journal’s page to the two words.  Barely a whisper, her soft lips moved to make the sounds until the words came to her in a flash.  “Bu…Bule..vard….Na…Natur..a….Bulevard Natura.”  She opened the envelope again, finding what she expected.  A feather tinged with blue.  She crumpled the letter and envelope and shoved it into the wood burning stove, and watched until it burned completely.  

Lifting the floorboard, she replaced the journal into its dark hole.  She stood up, held her breath, and strained her ears.  She could hear Mr. and Mrs. Ostevik laughing playfully in the next room.  They’d be going to bed soon.  Carefully, she steadily lifted the heavy bar from the door and set it in the corner.  She dreaded the night.  But she’d suffer it for the sons and daughters of Gundar. The things, the awful things that one will do in the name of love.  Even love abstracted.  Picking her tattered boots up, she slid out into the cold dark night.  The moon overhead hung in a hazy yellow glow.  She walked barefoot until she reached the rough cobble stone of Old Slavich Road.  Her unwilling feet pushed into the tattered leather boots.  

Vallaki was quiet and still in contrast to the turbulent clouds billowing in from the north.  She swam through the darkness like a fish in water.  Her dark eyes, black and round as coal set within a heart-shaped face, burned with eager energy.  As she moved north up Old Slavich Road, she was surprised to see a crowd of blue bloods ahead, those Vallaki nobles who deserved nothing less than death, prancing about carefree.   She lowered her head, as if by instinct.  Appearing timid, she passed among and threw the chattering crowds.  Their phony drunken and loose laughter filled her ears until it was all she could hear.  Her tiny chin trembled with anger and more, hatred.  They were repulsive.  “Focus” she reminded herself—“breath.”  

Most were too pre-occupied with themselves to take notice of the shabby girl walking among them.  Those that did notice her began pointing and whispering as if she was the black plague incarnate.  “She must…” a hideous blue-blooded woman laughed, “…she must be lost.  And look at the feather in her hair?  Now what is that about?”  The men and women surrounding the peacock of a woman laughed as if she had just made the most remarkable and witty observation in the history of civilization.

Gibrana, a blue tinged feather sticking out from her auburn hair, came to a halt as she came to Bulevard Natura.  Eyes on fire, she stood in the shadow of a two-story house, waiting, watching.  A tall well-dressed man strolled past her.  He stopped and examined a small garden patch, stealing a brief glance at the peasant girl.  He strolled up to her and whispered.  “Follow.”

She followed down the dark and lonely road, the sound of useless chattering and merriment in the background.  A guard made his routine patrol along the wall.  If he did notice them, he thought nothing of it.  Perhaps the man was just getting his fix.  And she just another whore.  She followed him into an unlit doorway.  

“Rodika.”  She seemed a child standing next to him.  Her heart shaped face peered up; there was nothing childlike in those fiery black eyes.  For him, it was plain to see. “Your work begins soon.  Within the week…”.  

After the two were certain that they understood one another, he plucked the blue tinged feather from her hair.  In the dark cracks of Vallaki society a vine begins to grow as voices of dissent join together.  They speak as one: “May the sons and daughters of Gundar live on.”

[crallbri]

Chapter Five

Voices.  Names.  Visions.


Restless shook the walls of The Lady’s Resting Place.  The door trembled, buckled, and groaned under the strain of the wind.  Dirtied plates and curdling milk from the breakfast, lunch, and dinner fed a host of flies.  The tattered boots of the girl stomped back and forth along the weathered, wood-planked floor.  Piling dishes on one table, stacking chairs on another.  You could taste the filth in the air.

Cezar slouched against the wall, half empty bottle of vodka for comfort.  He made no effort to conceal his agenda.  He sized her up the way a chef does his meat.  He licked his lips as she got on hands and knees to clean.  She was pretty, sort of, in a strange way.  A delicate chin.  Tiny hands and feet.  He took a swig and smacked his lips.  The woman-child had a fine ass.    

He stepped out from behind the counter. “Ya know, aint so bad after while.  Dem’ outlanders.  Ya’ see, they be sorta like stale brew, or…weavals in the bread,” he laughed, “or betta’ yet, like marriage!  Ya get used to it afta’ while, til’ ya don’t think twice bout’ it.  Not a bad life if I say so myself.”  If he was looking for admiration or envy, he was sorely disappointed.  She stood up abruptly and stormed over to the corner to snatch the broom.  

Mrs. Ostevik may have insisted that she give the man a hand.   But she didn’t say anything about having to talk to him.  She could feel the heat of his eyes as she bustled about the room.  Her calloused hands gripped the broom tight, making a furious sweep of the place.   Bread crumbs, caked mud, and dried leaves swirled into the center of the room.  She made every effort to pretend he wasn’t there; this only fueled his lustful temper more.  Cezar took another swig and wiped his mouth upon his sleeve.  Again, he took a few steps towards her.  

“Aint like yer goin’ places girl, so don’ be actin’ like yer betta’ than ya be.  Shit.  Ya think the Ostevik’s gonna put up long with a…with a thing like you…pah!  Gundarakite.”  Gibrana’s broom raged across the floor boards.  Her coal-black eyes burned within a cloud of dust.  Sometimes you just had to bleed to stand it.  To stand it all.  If not the blood of another, then your own.  She bit the inside of her lower lip until she could taste it.  True blood of a Gundarakite.

She sweeps the pile into a dust-pan and stomps to the back door where she throws its contents to the winds.  Spinning around she collides with Cezar whose standing directing in front of her, barring her way.  Her jaw clenches.   She can smell and feel his hot liquored breath.  She lowers her face, her voice is timid.  “I…I told you…Sir, I…I done give my word to the Ostevik’s I’d work til’ the end of harvest.  Mrs. Ostevik say she can spare me off an’ on for the time bein’.  Bout’ an hour in the eve.’”

Voices.  Names.  Visions.  Sometimes she didn’t recognize herself.  Coming to Vallaki had forced her to grow a tongue for every occasion.  Voices.  Fredek insisted that she’d say things that later she’d have no memory of.  Names.  How many names and faces can the mind suffer before it severs into a hundred different pieces.  How long before the fragmented ego gives birth to some new force, something nameless and indescribable.  Visions.  Visions of bloody hangings and eyeless faces came more vividly as of late.    She’d be watching Mrs. Ostevik eat her lamb stew the entire time seeing a bloody noose choked about her neck.    

His rough hand caresses her soft cheek.  He leans in.  She inches back.  She can feel dozens of splinters in the coarse wooden wall pierce her skin thruogh thin-worn garb.  No place to run.  Words start flying off her tongue.  “Sir…,” she stammers in a panic, “…night…I mean…the night be comin.’  And…Mrs. Ostevik…she be…she be sure sore if..if I be late.”  A faint smile startles him.  His hand retracts from the soft white of her face.  Coal-black eyes.  

A vision.  Cezar’s eyes, pulpy with blood, lay in her calloused white palms.  Two vacant black holes, charred with crusty blood, gaze blindly upon her.  The vision fades.  She looks away.  “Sir…you be too kind, s..sir, it’d be a shame if Mrs. Ostevik prevented me from lendin’ a cleanin’ hand, s..sir.”  He stands back, bottle in hand.  Such a strange wench.  He wondered if she was a bit dumb.  But meat was for tasting, not conversing.  

She grabbed her basket and flung herself out the door, out into the ferocious wind.

[crallbri]

Chapter Six


The Politeness of Devils



Inhale.  Rodika flung her body out the door, leaving the groaning of the Lady’s Resting Place behind.  Her dress, its original color long-gone dead, flapped violently in the wind.  The sun, battered upon a wind-worn field of sky, crawled among crippled clouds towards an indifferent grave.  A long held breath.  The night triumphantly rears her head and raises her misty veil.  Dark and sweet she breathes upon the streets, the streets of Vallaki.

Exhale.  A fog began to creep along the broken cobble and barren streets.  The fog muffled the echoing retreat of feet between the seedy rows of two story homes.  Rows of homes of blackening decay, chipped, yellow-tarter teeth.  Rodika’s coal-black eyes, aloof and wary, watched as a crooked-leg man leads an Ox and cart around the bend.  She feels something.  Eyes.  She feels eyes.  

Inhale.  She pauses.  Red flames flap vividly just ahead.  A hooded man in fine robes of white, black, and red stands on the corner.  Her step quickens.  He takes a step off the curb in her direction.  She holds tight to her basket.  
   
“Miss?”.  She looks around, confused.  “O’ Miss.”  She notices two white rows of smiling teeth within the cowl of the hood.  Her eyes are drawn to the man’s robes.   Every fine detail registers within a blink of an eye.  Local cloth.  Local dye.  The base of the robes white.  Quality cotton.  The man’s broad shoulders, from arm to arm, are colored black.  Embroidered within that black were red flames that seemed alive as the wind rippled.  How strange, she thought.

The night's breath tore through the streets of Valkali.  The man’s robes sounded like a flag on a pole.  She looked away.  The robes made her dizzy.  A scowl darkened the girl’s heart-shaped face.  She side-steps and breezes past him.  The man throws his hood back, and goes to one knee with a sweeping bow.  “Do pardon the intrusion miss, but I ask for the kindness of a few words to spare.”  She stood stuck in her tracks.  What is he doing? Bowing?  Bowing to me?! Flustered, her eyes dart in every direction, stunned by the man’s blatant show of kindness and respect.  Her tongue twisted into knots.  For a brief moment, coal-black eyes look upon the features of his face.  Smooth unblemished skin.  Brown hair.  Neatly trimmed. Light blue eyes.  The man’s diction, it was that of a noble, but his accent was that of an outlander.  And that always means trouble.  Timidly, she looks down to the cobble street underfoot.  


“My name…is Shamas Lore.”  Those teeth!  She could not get past those teeth.  So white.  So Straight.  So Clean.  Unlike the black decay of the seedy streets around them.  “Might I know if you are the same girl that has been working for Cezar, the owner of the Lady’s Resting Place?”  Her palms began to sweat.  He continued smiling.  She held the basket in front of her belly; a buffer.  

Exhale.  Her jaw clenches with each passing question.  Suspicion.   Why was the man asking questions?  It was no outlander’s business.  Her temper flared.  Her tongue untied itself to a sling of words.  “What it be to ya, if am or if I aint’ the girl?  And why do you be goin’ bout’ lookin for her?  What woud’ ya ever want with us simple folk?  And what be more, is why in the devil woud’ she be wantin’ to share words with the likes of you… outlander!?”  The word ‘outlander’ flew off her tongue like coughed-up phlem.  

Shamas Lore smiled on despite the girl’s apparent deficiency in hospitality and manners.  But just as he was about to reply accordingly, she turned abruptly and bolted down the street.    


Fog licked at the heels of tattered boots on retreat.  As she rounded a bend in the road, she caught a faint glimpse of red flames rippling in the wind.  White robes, black shoulders, red flames.  Her jaw tensed.  She was being followed.  Not wanting to be obvious, her stride kept pace, past the warehouses, down the barren street and through the now guard-less gates.  Past the low hum of Bervis’s bees, she came to the well-kept Ostevik Farm.  She threw herself inside and slammed the door.  She kicked her pitiful boots into the corner and paused to catch her breath.  

Inhale.  Her spine tensed.  Her ears twitched at the sound of door hinges squeaking.  She pressed herself against the wall.  Would the shadow aid her?  Her eyes darted to the iron bar in the adjacent corner.  Too late.  “Breath slow” she said to herself.  Her breath became quiet and even.  The door creaked open.  Her heart skipped a beat.  Thu……thump!  As the door inched open her heart began to pound within her tiny ears.  Thu-thump!  The door opened a foot, then held steady.  The door groaned under the relentless push of the wind.   But the door held!  Thu-thump!  Thu-thump!  Some invisible force held the door in place.  Coal-black eyes widened within the shadows.  

Exhale.  A swirling vision of white, black, and red flashed before her.  The door swung wide open and banged against the wall.  The robes!  The man with the teeth!  The burning flames of red on black!  The swirling colors rushed past her, then vanished.  Gone!  Gone into the house?  Time seemed to slow as fear took hold.  “Am I breathing still?” she wondered.  Leaves swirled in a panic within the entry way.  But then a familiar voice broke the spell.  “Close the door Rodika!” yelled Mrs. Ostevik from the other room.  She looks at the leaves swirling about the entry way.  The door banged wildly.  She closes her eyes for a moment.  She Breathes.  Her eye lids lift slowly revealing coal-black eyes in distress.  A vision?  Just in my head?  Yes, maybe.  But…no, it felt so…different.  So…real.  

Inhale.  She stood silent as a stone’s shadow.  She stared at the door as it banged open and shut in the wind.  “Close it!” she told herself.  She focused on her tiny hands.  She tried commanding the fingers to move.  “Close it you stupid girl!”  Thu-thump!  Thu-thump!      

Exhale.  Just as a trembling hand began to reach out from the shadow, white, black, and red swirled before her.  Again!  Red flames rippling on black!  The robes!  The man with the teeth!  Then just as abruptly, the colors blinked out of existence.  Her trembling hand desperately reached out from the shadows and slammed the door shut.  Grabbing the iron bar, she sealed the door.  Breathing hard.  Breathing fast.  Her legs buckled underneath her.  She fell against the door, feeling sick.  The scene with Shamas Lore played over and over in her mind.  Those white teeth.  So straight.  So clean.  He bowed to one knee.  A polite smile.  Kind blue eyes.  The diction of a noble.  

Never.  Never would she forget the manners of Shamas Lore nor the politeness of devils.  
[/i]

[crallbri]

Chapter Seven


White Egg Shells

Light and dark danced among the blades of swaying grass, as a warm afternoon breeze kissed her heart-shaped cheek.  The wind that stirred and hummed through the forest canopy was hypnotic.  In tattered boots, with cracked leather laces, she swayed back and forth to the rhythm of the wind-hum, oblivious to the world around her.

It was with this unbearable lightness of being that the wind-song chimed through the changing colors of leaves.  Inspiring change!  Inviting and enticing a fractured mind to rest her weary selves for a spell.  And why not, whispered the wind, why not shake loose the dead skin of worn-torn ragged cloths?  Why not, whispered the wind, why not dance to shake off the names that bind us?   Be like, whispered the wind, be like some terrible and beautiful snake slithering through blades of time and space towards some venomous peace of mind.  

Beauty is but the begging of terror.  

Inhale.  Two heavy eyelids open as the wind suddenly ceases.  Two coal-black eyes stare straight ahead into the darkness of the woods.  How many times has she walked straight past these woods without once stopping?  Without premeditation, she kicked her boots off.  Exhale.  A gust of wind swept across the surrounding lands of Vallaki as she approached the mouth of the tunnel.  On the tips of her toes she paused and took in air.  Gentle blades of grass caressed her tiny calloused toes.  The woodsy scent and rich aromas filled her nose with sweet sensations.  A smile began to crack her heart-shaped face wide open.  

Into the dark tunnel her tiny toes took her, a basket of eggs in hand, until she emerged within some enchanted grove.  Beams of light and shadow, some thin some thick, flooded through the canopy of green life above.  She held her hands in front of her face and marveled as leaf shadows danced upon her skin.  The wind that flowed like weightless water through the trees was hypnotic.  Barefoot, as if in a dream, she took a step closer until she found herself standing before a large slab of grey stone.  It was a tombstone and around this tombstone were six glowing candles.  The wicks flickered.  She stepped forward.  Words.  Engraved within the stone were words.  Her soft lips silently sounded each letter.  Her coal-black eyes burned with eager energy as one by one the sounds became words in her mind.    “Here…lies….Evee…Beiderbecke.”  The name stirred something.  But reaching out to memory was like trying to grasp a fleeting shadow.   As leaves fell slowly upon the gentle winds around her she mouthed the next few words.  “In…the…end…the…love…you….take…”.  A melodic voice of another woman broke in to finish the sentence for her.  “…is equal…to the love…you make.”

She spun about on scared bare feet to face a most unordinary spectacle.  Gold-tinged eyes as round as a golden pond smiled mischievously at her.  Her skin was as smooth as a blue cloudless sky.  Her features were tiny, her gestures elegant, her voice musical and full of grace.  The only cloths, if you can call them cloths, were loosely gathered leaves of green that barely concealed the woman’s shapely curves and breasts.  
The basket dropped to the ground with a thud.  Both sets of eyes watched as a white egg wobbled to its final resting place over green blades of grass to stop directly in front of the enchanting woman.  The woman snatched the egg up and held it in the smooth palm of her hand.  Lush lips parted to sing “I watch you…when you are out in the fields…pulling weeds…and pitching hey.  Hey…what is your name?”  
   
She’d never heard talk like that before.  Her tongue felt heavy and ugly as she stammered to speak.
   
“I…” Gibrana shook her head back and forth slowly, “I…don’t…know.”  

   The dryad’s chiming laughter electrified the air as she spoke.  “I thought…all of your kind…had names.”  She stopped laughing and tossed the white egg up into the air with a mischievous grin.  “Want to…play a game?”  
   
Voices.  A voice in her head screamed at her.  “Rodika….you MUSTN’T…let…her…WIN!!”  She began breathing heavily.  Her eyes darted in every direction at once. As the white egg flew high into the air the dryad titled her head and said, “You know…this egg…you are just like...this egg.”  The egg landed in the soft palm of her hand.  She tapped the fragile white shell with a long fingernail and smiled ear to ear.  Tap! Tap!  Tap!  She giggled devilishly.  “Hard…yet…fragile on the outside, but…” but something snapped within Gibrana.   Coal-black eyes began to smoulder and burn within her heart-shaped face.  Her jaw tensed as she lunged at the woman, pushing past her, back the way she came through the dark forest tunnel.  
   
Inhale.  The wind ceased.  Heavy eyelids blinked slowly.  She found herself standing over her tattered boots upon the dusty dirt road.  Confused she looked at the tiny toes of her feet.  She then held her tiny hands up in front of her face.  At last, she slumped down in the middle of the dirt road and just stared with a blank look at a weed.  It must have been an hour, maybe two, maybe three, before Styr came walking leisurely down the road to stand before her.  
“Rodika?”  Styr’s voice slowly reached her as the layers within her mind peeled back.  She looked up into Styr’s face after her name had been repeated several times.  “I said, whats the matter with you?”  
“Wha..what?”  Rodika quickly pulled her boots on and stood up to a head rush.  
“Where’s your basket?  Whats wrong with you?”
Rodika’s head slowly turned to face the dark wooded tunnel.  
“In there?”  
“I…I…I don’t…I don’t know.”
Styr’s patience with the girl was remarkable.  “Come on then.  You sure do look like you could use some sleep.”

Styr led Rodika by the hand into the forest grove.  The tombstone stood just as it did before.  Her basket lain on its side not far.  Rodika’s eyes searched through the shadows of the grove apprehensively.  What was this place?  In a daze she walked towards the basket.  Rodika kneeled down to pick something up.  A white egg rested in the palm of her tiny hand.  Her fingernail tapped it three times.  Tap!  Tap!  Tap!  Then she extended her arm, and rotated her palm.  The white egg slipped through the darkness until it cracked open upon a cold grey stone.  She watched as the little pieces of white egg shells drifted upon a bloody sea of yellow among the blades of green grass.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(hats off to Dark Fey for her role as the Dryad)

[crallbri]

Chapter Eight


The Torture of Baltasar

Somewhere deep inside the ribbed cage of Vallaki prison a heart pounded.  The rank of aged vomit and urine permeated the air.  But there was something more.  He could taste it; anticipation.  They were coming.  Bleeding feet paced anxiously back and forth across the wet stone.  In dark cells, between fits of coughing and the ramblings of madmen, the barely sane struggled to hold on to familiar names and faces.  Come morning, it would begin, again.  The questions.  The torture.  The torture of Baltasar.  


The smoking braziers in three corners of the room flickered as a damp breeze blew through the open door.  A young man, with shoulders an ox would kill for, twidled his thumbs to the sleepy drone of rain drops on stone.  Sitting across from him, two guards gorged themselves with roasted lamb and free liquor.  Liquored lips smacking.  Men chewing with mouths wide open.  “Uh…we,” his words came out slow and deliberate, “Um…well…the wife, ta’ be honest…well, ya’ see, it was her who put me up to it.”  The guards smacked their lips in sync and each took another swig.  A brown bottle in one hand, a leg of lamb in the other.  Drink and chew.  Swallow and refill.  His good-natured farm-boy smile was received indifferently.  He couldn't have been older than eighteen, but boys were often married by sixteen, girls even younger.  Baby fat still clung to his dirt smudged cheeks.  Neither bothered to make polite conversation with him.  The bumpkin had the look of a Gundarakite about him.  He looked to be some cross-breed between a common street urchin and your average illeterate country yokel.  

The farm boy's biceps and calves, as bulky and round as canon balls, shifted in the small metal chair.  The baby fat on his rump was no protection from the tiny metal jabbings.  The blacksmith must have known what he was doing.  It was a chair for visitors.  The sort of visitors who are given the hospitality of shackles and iron links.  The farmer’s fat thumbs twidled round n’ round’ as he tried not to think about the tales this metal chair would tell if chairs could talk.

In sync, the guards took another swig.  His thumbs slowed as his eyes lingered on their austere faces.  “She, well, we…ta’ be honest…,” his farm-boy smile was met once again with indifference, “…we, her and I, that is…we jus’ be, um…wantin’ ta’…ta’ thank ya’ proper…ya' know.”  He sighed.  How much longer he wondered.  A bead of sweat began to form on his broad forehead.  “Ta’ thank ya…for what the city-watch does, day in, day out.  Ya’ know, with em’ outlandas’ runnin bout’ an’ all.  Dangerous times these be.”

He stopped twiddling his thumbs and looked down at the rich black dirt under his fingernails.  A heavy thunk jerked his head back up.  One of the guards was sprawled out face down on the stone floor.  The stone showed no mercy.  The man’s nose was flattened.  His right hand still clutched a leg of lamb.  The thick brown bottle of ale in the other.  The farmer looked to the other guard.  He appeared to be lounging happily in his chair, with his head hung back.  His eyelids heavy under the drug.  The farmer stuck his tongue under his bottom lip and tried to whistle.  But nothing.  Soundless wind in a barren tunnel.  Beads of sweat began to crowd his forehead.  His heart began to pound.  He tried again.  He stuck his tongue under his bottom lip and pursed his lips.  Slowly it came, a strained whistle.  Like the weak chirp of a new born bird.

To the call of the whistle, it emerged from the darkness.  A child-like wraith flew through the open door in silent fury.  Coal-black eyes burning within a skull-like face gazed upon the room as thunder outside shook the ground.  It leapt onto the guard’s back.  A tiny black-gloved hand gripped the man’s hair and yanked hard.  The loose wrinkled skin on the man’s face stretched, as the fatty tissue of his neck was exposed.  The child-like fiend unsheathed a silent blade.  The slice was swift, precise, meticulous.  Warm blood streamed across the cold stone floor as the soundless wraith glided towards the lounging man in the chair.  The apple in his throat already exposed, as if waiting for the slaughter.  Coal-black eyes flickered within the bone-white mask as death was dealt to the sleeper.  The man’s drool and blood mingled.  A little finger went to the lipless lips of the bone masked face.  “Shhh…” it whispered into the dead man’s ear.  Its fingers, a he or a she, one could not tell, traced the rims of the man’s eye sockets and lingered.  

The farmer (if he was in fact a farmer, none can truly say) did not want to watch.  He pulled the men’s boots off, their pants, their shirts, and chain-mail.  The uniform was a tight fit, but with a sucked in gut, doable.  He wrapped each corpse, one by one, in standard issued prison blankets, hoisted them over his broad shoulders like sacks of potatoes, and dropped them into a far corner.  Within minutes the room was brought back to its original state.  Almost.  Minus two guardsmen and two legs of lamb—at least to the unsuspecting eye.  Everything dead, the men, the meat, the brown empty bottles, huddled coldly under brown coarse blankets.  

The farmer took a few deep breathes and stepped into the dank passage-way.  The stink of aged urine, drunken vomit, and damp neglect railed his senses.  The burning torch in the wall ahead cast ominous shadows across the wall as the child-like wraith tip-toed ahead of him.  It paused, holding a black palm up signaling to hold.  The palm was replaced by a single finger, which then pointed ahead.  One more guard between death, liberty, or both.  The wraith-child, a girl or a boy, one could not rightly tell, pressed itself against the wall.  The shadow its companion.  The farmer took a deep breath, sucked in his gut, straightened the guard’s helm on his head, and took a step forward.  


Somewhere deep inside the belly of Vallaki prison a heart pounded.  The rank of aged vomit and urine permeated the air.  Bleeding feet paced anxiously.  Come morning, it would begin, again.  Or would it?  The questions.  The torture.  But they were coming.  They are already here.  It has begun.  It...has come.



(special thanks to dm blue and dm-nocte-)

[crallbri]

Chapter Nine


Bulls
Dung
and
Liberty

The Story of Fredek Arteli




The southern mountains grumbled.  A storm was mounting.  Cows began their slow retreat to gather under the leafy canopy near the Ostevik farm.  They could smell the rain coming.  Cloudy pillows rolled down the rocky mountain side as shepards and farmers in the valley below scrambled in preparation.  Vallaki trembled and braced itself while the marvelous energy of Barovian youth unchecked continued playing their games.




“Ah ha! Ya’ filthy pirate!”  The boy’s eyes narrowed as he pointed the tip of the toy-sword at Fredek’s nose.   “Wipe that bloody grin off that chubby pox-rot slab ya’ call a face!  Unhand Princess Rodika this instant!  No?!  You defy me?!  Fine then.” The boy’s grip on the wooden hilt tightened.  “Have it your way then!  Taste steel!”  With a fancy twirl of the wrist, the boy flung his head back and lunged forward, thrusting the tip of the stick into Fredek’s stomach.  Crack!  

The tip of the stick splintered and dangled by a thin pulpy fiber.  With a look of dismay, he lifted the splintered tip of the “sword” up and held it to its severed base.  His fingers slowly retracted, with hope that the wood’s fibers would miraculously reconnect by some pure force of will.  But it was to no good end.  The tip of his mighty sword dangled like a dead worm on a hook.  

The barn and house trembled as rolling thunder shook the fertile valley.  

Fredek grimaced and lifted his shirt up to inspect his wounded belly.  Leon, with the gait of a swashbuckler, took a bold step forward and jabbed a finger into a deceptive roll of baby fat.  Not all things are as they seem.  Hardened muscle surprised his jabbing finger.  Fredek’s belly was a canon ball thinly disguised as bread dough. He withdrew his finger and rubbed the soreness out, then folded his arms across his little chest and arched his head back to stare up at Fredek.  “Sword or no sword!  No pirate scum, canon balls an’ all, can withstand the might of this valiant arm!”  Leon flexed his right arm to produce a small stone of a muscle.  A smile brimmed with laughter cracked open Rodika’s heart-shaped face.  She loved Leon.  It was rare these days for anyone to hold a place within the young woman’s heart.  Like her mother, Poriska, her heart was an inn with many rooms.  But unlike her mother, the sacrifices required for liberty, demanded cold and indifferent vacancy.  It was within these blackened and abandoned chambers of the heart that some nameless dread, some unknown quality as old as the mist itself, took occupancy.

“Leon!”  Eval Ostevik stalked out of the barn with a heavy rope of hemp in hand.  Rodika’s smile fled from her face as she squatted low to pull weeds newly sprung along the walkway.  “Stop pesterin’ em’.  They’re busy.”  He tossed the rope to Fredek without looking him in the face, his eyes instead focused south to the dark clouds crowding the mountain’s peak.  Fredek stood a hand taller than most Barovians.  But he was just as stocky and barrel chested as the best of them.  His wool shirt and trousers, worn thin and stained with who knows what, concealed his true girth.  Just seventeen, the last vestments of youth’s baby fat clung valiantly to the big boned Gundarakite.  It was more than mere charity that led to the Artali’s adoption of the troubled youth.  The Gundarakite of Zeidenburg are a practical people.  At least Gusztav Artali was.  It took but one gander at the brawny street urchin to make up his mind.  Gusztav, like any red blooded Gundarakite, would rather die in the witch’s kettle than leave the family forge heirless for some pompous Barovian blue-blood to lay claim to.  Besides, he could also see the loneliness over the long years begin to etch themselves into the crow’s feet around his wife’s eyes.  After several miscarriages, Mariska was desperate for a child to spoil.  That spoiled child became Fredek Artali.  

The wind among the trees suddenly ceased.  Leaves became still.  Birds grew as silent as the stones.  The mountains shook.

At the end of childhood’s pretend, Leon flung his damaged sword into the quiet woods.  Sullen as a toad, he shook a tiny fist towards Fredek.  “Don’t count your blessings just yet pirate filth.  The winds of chance may have puffed up yours sails this time.  But no ship’s cove or watery cave can hide the likes of ya’ from the likes of me foreva’.”  With that, the boy spun on his heels to face Rodika.  He bowed until the mop of hair on his head touched the ground.  “Princess Rodika.”  Rodika shook the hair on the boy’s head fondly as he stood up.  Mr. Ostevik barked out the rest of his orders as Leon followed him back into the house.  “Day light be on the run, night be given chase.  And a storm comin’ somethin’ wicked this way.  Elfric!  Get that stump out of the ground.  Rodika!  Give the boy a hand with Lil’ ol’ Cracker.  Think we’ll spare Elfric the fate of chicken feed!”  Fredek heard Eval laugh as the door closed behind him.

With a confused face, he turned to Rodika.  “Huh?  Lil’ ol’ Cracker?  Chicken feed?”

“I can see the future plain nuf,’ Elfric…” She wiped her sleeve across tired eyes, “…supper won’t be ready as quickly as Queen-Bitch Rosallia wants it.  And it won’t be your ass gettin’ the leather strap!” Fredek slung the bundle of rope over a shoulder as Rodika hurried off into the barn.  He was quite the sight.  He hadn’t been working long enough to get fang in hand yet.  Not until the end of the week.  But when he did, he planned to buy some proper boots.  The ones he had, barely qualified to be called such.  At least in the case of one boot.  He was lucky the wolves only took that much.  A bundle of loose leather scraps clung to his left foot, held together by a tangle of twine.  The scarecrow had better shoes and attire.  If only they weren’t a few sizes too small, he’d gladly swap.

When Rodika stepped out of the barn, she began to panic at the ridiculous spectacle before her.   Fredek was in the act of grabbing the bull by the horns, literally.  “Segitseg!  Segitseg!” shouted Fredek as he tried to wrestle the bull into compliance.   But the bull was, well, bull-headed.  If you can imagine that.  The bull thrashed its horns side to side, up and down, until the brawny lad was flung face first into a pile of dung.  Fredek lifted his bruised face, blew the hair out of his eyes, and spit the “dirt” from his mouth.  Two pigs lifted their hairy snouts up from the mud and gave a snorting cheer.  “Oh!...what do ya’ be laughin at!”.      

Rodika stomped into the fenced in area.  “Stop loafin about Elfric!  Too much city in ya!”  A cube of raw sugar sat in the center of her tiny palm.  The bull’s tail began to swat back and forth as Rodika took a few steps backwards, leading the bull on.  “Ya see, this be Lil’ ol’ Cracker.”  Fredek worked to untangle himself as he regained his feet.  “Don’t be named that for nothin’ neither.  Cracked one of them dwarves in the head few months back.  Hence, the name.  Don’t know what the dwarf was thinkin’ ta’ be toyin around with Mr. Ostevik’s bull…but….”  Both of them shuddered as their imaginations filled in the blanks.  They’d heard all sorts of perverted stories regarding dwarves and outlander folks.  800 pounds of bull lumbered behind Rodika’s tiny palm as the three of them made their way over to the next field.  

The valley trembled.  The quiet eager leaves among the trees quivered in anticipation.

Fredek picked pieces of straw off himself as they kept pace with the lumbering bull, keeping one eye fixed south to the clouds rolling in from the mountains.  “Rodika?  What do ya’ think causes their legs to shrivel up like that?  And their heads, don’t ya think they be too big for their torsos?”  Fredek was a wee lad when he saw his first dwarf.  But it was from a distance and that was the extent of it.        

Rodika’s tired eyes followed Fredek’s line of sight to the gathering storm clouds to the south.  “Them dwarves, they be the crippled gimps of inbreeds, so I’m told.  The ill-begotten devils born from the disgustin’ union of witches and imps.”  The bull tossed its head up and down, its nostrils flared, eager for the sweet prize.  “Well, as I was sayin,’ Lil’ ol’ Cracker cracked a stubby one’s melon wide open it did.  You’ll see one for yourself fore’ long.  Back and forth they go…,” she pointed west then east with the pitchfork, “…trampin’ through like they be little lords of the land, axe wavin’ over chubby heads.”  Rodika looked to the chicken coup as she led the bull past.  “Well, that deformed little fella’ be feedin the chickens now.  Least some good come of him.”  

Fredek looked back to the chicken coup as they rounded the bend.  As a young boy, barely scrapping a living in the back alleys of Zeidenburg, he always pictured the pastoral life as nice and peaceful.  But that was then, this is now.  And now, he was almost certain of it.  He hated it. He’d much rather feed iron to the forge than this.  Animals eat and shit, day after day.  Men called them beasts of burdens.  Now he knew why.  It was a healthy way to lie to one’s self.  It was the farmer who was the real beast of burden.  He’d much rather submit himself to the tempers of iron and steel than be a slave to the appetites and neediness of breathing, eating, swatting, shitting, malicious, greedy little pigs and cows.  In fact, as the days here in Vallaki wore on, he was coming to regret the path that brought him here more and more.  The revolution smelled like this?  A pile of dung?  Why did he leave the forge behind to farm another man’s land?  He just couldn’t make heads from tails of it all.  His path was lost to him.  And Gibrana.  It was the strangest thing.  He struggled to connect the hot blooded girl he met in Zeidenburg with the girl before him leading the bull on.  

Black clouds marched in line into the fertile valley sparing nothing.  Wind thrashed the trees to their very roots.

Rodika, Fredek, and the Lil’ ol’ Cracker looked up as lightning cracked the sky wide open.  Bullets of rain began pelting them.  The tree stump before them looked like a miniature castle with a moat dug around it, minus a draw bridge.  The dug out ground around the stump was filling with cold rain water fast.  Fredek set himself to task, fastening the rope.  Rodika stood off to the side, pitchfork in one hand, the other hand firmly planted on a hip.  There was no fighting the Barovian wind and rain.  Her wet dress flapped violently about her wiry limbs.  Her tattered boot tapped impatiently as rain pounded the dirt into mud.  Rodika’s temper mounted as the electrical storm charged overhead.  She knew Rosallia would be a bitch tonight, supper or no supper.

Fredek pulled on the rope until it was taut then gave a grim nod.  Rodika reached deep into her pocket.  The cube dissolved into a pool of liquid sugar in her wet palm.  Some things change slow in time.  While other things change in a flash.  The bull licked his lips and was led on until the lifeless trunk began to moan like some reluctant corpse.  The tree stump groaned as its bone like roots were pried loose from the ground.  The bull dragged it a few yards until its roots were shooting straight up towards the warring sky.  The roots, like trembling fingers, vibrated as lightning streaked down to the ground.  The two of them could not help but to stand and stare at the uprooted tree corpse.  “Sorta looks like a pulled tooth don’t it?!” shouted Fredek over the bullets of hail.  The bull’s tongue lapped up the dissolved sugar from Rodika’s palm, coating its happy tongue.  

Fredek slid the wet locks of hair from his face and glanced over to Rodika.  Rodika’s knuckles were turning white as she gripped the wet wooden shaft of the pitchfork tight.  Her dark eyes were squinted and staring off into the dark rain.  As he was thinking this must be another strange episode of hers, he noticed a robed man approaching as a streak of lightning split open the rainy sky, illuminating everything upon the field, for a moment.    

Rodika slowly squatted down.  Without prying her wary eyes from the figure her tiny hand felt through the mud until the hard comfort of a rock met the touch.  The hooded figure of a man approached and then just stood there, looking to the tree stump, the two peasants, and the bull.  “What are you two doing here in this field?”  Rodika and Fredek’s eyes met briefly.  Another outlander sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.  She raised the pitchfork into the air and showed the man the rough side of her native tongue.  “Utazik messze! Outlanda!  Utazik messze!  Nem segitseg!”  The outlander had no idea what she had just said.  But it was plain enough.  A sarcastic smile appeared within the cowl of the man’s hood.  “Ahh, the warm hospitality of the local…peasants.  Warms the bones up on a cold and dreary night such as this.  Doesn’t it?”  Rodika tossed the heavy rock up and down in her left hand.  Her foot tapped impatiently.  Her jaw taut, her cheek muscles pulsed with tension.  Finally, with a sardonic bow fit for blue-blood pomp, the unwelcome outlander spun on his heels and returned the way he came.  

The regiment of charging clouds rolled onward north.  The fields left behind littered with lifeless limbs of trees and broken corn stalks.  

The wet rock fell from her finger tips to plop into the mud at her feet.  It was then she caught sight Lil’ ol’ Cracker lurching forward to sink its teeth into one of Mr. Ostevik’s prized punkins.  “Elfric!  The bull!  The pumpkin!”  Fredek launched into action.  But the tangled twine holding his “boot” to his foot caught on a root poking up from the ground, sending him tripping through the damp air to land smack dab on top of the gigantic pumpkin.   Slowly, he pushed himself to his hands and knees.  He puckered his lips and spit out a pumpkin seed.   Yep.  He was certain of it now.  He’d much rather submit himself to the tempers of iron and steel than be a slave to the appetites and neediness of breathing, eating, swatting, shitting, malicious, greedy little pigs and cows.  And bulls.  He loathed it all.  Slowly, he regained his feet cradling the broken pumpkin in both arms.  He hoped the life he started here in Vallaki would have a fairer end than this.  That the revolution would not be like this sad and broken pumpkin.  Nor his own knoggen for that matter.  Its the worst form of remorse that a man or woman can know; to destroy the very thing that you worked so hard to preserve.




A chill wind blew through the rocky mountain passes down into the valley below.   The night sky to the north flashed.  The storm rolled north over the Barovian Lake leaving Vallaki’s cobble streets wet, empty, and dead.

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(special thanks to shady_merchant and dm dark fey)

[crallbri]

Chapter Ten


Secrets Within the Fold.


The kerchief.  In Barovia it ties everything together; men and women, boys and girls, rich and poor, young and old, the past, the future.  

Women wear kerchiefs folded, or cut into a triangle.  On the head.  Over the shoulders.  Pinned to, or tucked in the front.  Kerchiefs are for warmth.  Kerchiefs are for fashion.  Old.  Young.  Rich.  Poor.  All women wear kerchiefs. All women have secrets.  They are signs.  All kerchiefs speak to those who know the language.  The color, the cut, the border, the texture, the knot, the fold, the weave.  This is syntax.  But beware, some cuts are elusive.  Some things cannot be so easily dissected and made plain.  Not all truths can be so easily contained.  Pinned to the wall like some dead insect.  

Men wear kercheifs.  They can be made of homespun, or of expensive silk.  Some are plain.  Some are printed with pictures or designs.  Working men wear kerchiefs around the neck while plowing the field or sheering the sheep.  It is a practical relationship.  Blue-bloods often sport them as neckties, which is like a cravat, or a stock.  They can be made of dark or light material.  Some have polka dots or checks.  Some have woven borders.  Many men prefer borders.  This is why Cezar likes his rugs.  

Listen.  This is semantics.  Brown.  Grey.  Black.  These are the colors that Barovians favor.  Gundaraktie women favor muted colors.  Blue.  Yellow.  Green.  The colors of spring trees and open sky.  This is dialect.  Barovian girls wear their kerchiefs pinned or tucked in the front.  These are clues.  Barovian women once married wear kerchiefs upon the heads.  Gibrana’s dilemma.  Gundarakite girls are born with kerchiefs on the head.  Who are they married to?  These are secrets within the fold.  

Kercheifs.  They tie everything together.  So do rugs.  But rugs tell a different story.  We won’t talk of rugs just yet.  Listen.  Rodika’s hair is wild when it rains.  She used to pay as little mind to her kerchief as she does her socks.  The body knows the soothing sensation of conforming fabric over smooth skin for but a brief moment.  After that, it is a marriage of convenience.  The skin of the foot and the wool fibers prefer it this way.  It is a practical relationship.  If we were aware of every sensation at once, the molecules and atoms of the body would scatter into oblivion.  

Secrets.  Gundarakite girls are born with kerchiefs.  Blue.  Brown.  Green.  Barovian girls hate them for this.  They hate Gibrana.  They hate the fading kerchief on her head.  The sensation threatens to scatter her to the winds.  Every strand of hair on end stands in dissent.  It is a plain kerchief.  Muted yellow.  Its fold is deceptive to eyes like pins.  Some kerchiefs have lace.  Not this one.  This one is faded along the fold.   Cezar drinks heavy on the nights that Gibrana works.  He calls her Rodika.  Most do.  It is for their own good.  His blurry vision follows the intricate folds in her kerchief until he looses himself.  He can only grasp Rodika in a one or two word utterance.  The rest of her is foreign to him.  His blood-hound nose fails him here.  The scent is lost within the folds of muted yellow.    

Perhaps this is why Cezar finds comfort in rugs.  It has definite borders.  The rug is self-contained.  It’s meaning plain.  You can stand on it.  Perhaps this is why the grey men are following the elven woman upstairs.  Perhaps all women, even outlanders, have secrets.    

Listen.  Most nights Gibrana takes the rug out back to beat it with a broom.  Not this night.  She is saved the trouble.  Dust falls from the ceiling as the floorboards overhead shake.  Two heavy thuds.  One.  Then another.  Then silence.  She tucks a strand of hair into her kerchief.  She knows the sound of bodies falling.  She drops her rag into a bucket of steamy water.  Tiny hands untie the knot under her tiny chin.

The kerchief.  In Barovia it ties everything together; men and women, boys and girls, rich and poor, young and old, the past, the future.  These are clues.  Pay attention.  The rug.  13’6 long.  8’8 wide.  Matted.  Worn.  Bordered.  Brown.  Passenger of one.  Gibrana straightens the kerchief on her head.  Muted yellow.  Secrets within the fold.

[crallbri]

Chapter Eleven



Eyes




Eyes.  Like hungry pins they stab at her.  All day.  Every day.  

Desperate for revelation.  

For four days the man’s eyes followed her.  Hungry for something.

For three days the man’s eyes struggled to pin back the

Folds of her kercheif.  Muted yellow.  

She rounds the bend in the road.  Past the warehouse.  

The plain clothed man on her heels.  He dresses as a peasant.  

The kerchief around his neck is plain.  Grey.  Its borders

Contained.  Barovian.  She knows this much.  

He is not what his cloths claim him to be.  


The echo of boot-heels on wet cobble is choked within the fog.  


For two days.  The man’s eyes have asked for too much.  

Most know her as Rodika.  It is for their own good.   But this man.  

He cannot help himself.  His eyes want revelation.  He wants to

Make her plain.  

To expose her like some dead insect pinned to the wall.  

Under a spot light.  Unfolded and open for all eyes to see.  


Today.  He wants to write the rules of the game.  

Today.  He wants to know her name.  


Gibrana’s tiny hands grip the slippery black iron rings of the door.  

If he really must know whats hidden within the fold...

She will oblige.  

She grunts, closing the heavy doors behind her.  

She leaves the open road.  

A few seconds into the dense forest is enough.  The man comes

Blasting through the doors.  His head spins this way and that

Way.  Eyes like pins stab

Blindly in the rain for his query.  Coal-black eyes study the man

From the misty woods.  

Rain drops dampen her heart-shaped face.   She squats slowly,

Her tiny hand searching

Until it finds the cold comfort of a jagged stone.  Her jaw clenches.  

She sets her basket behind a tree.  The muscles in her cheeks

Pulse.  She slips tiny feet out of tattered boots.


She steps out of the woods.  Rain falls gently.  Barefoot and quiet.  

She walks up behind the man.  

The man stops.  His head slowly turns.  His eyes catch a glimpse of

Muted yellow in the mists.  Too late.  She smiles.  

A barefoot heel hammers at one of the man’s knee caps.  Snap.  

He slams helplessly into the ground.  He spins around to a blur of

Muted-yellow.  Lightning spits the sky overhead.


Tiny hands lift the rock high over the man’s face.  

The man’s eyes widen.  

Most call her Rodika.  It is for their own good.  

Coal-black eyes flicker within the shadowy

Heart of her child-like face.  

The man’s hands fly up to shield his eyes.  No good.  The

Jagged edge drives into the fleshy skin.  Again and again.  


Thunder rumbles.  Rain gently coats the man’s eyeless face.  

She flings the bloody rock into the thick of the woods.  

Grips the man’s ankles.  Drags him into the woods.  

The wolves will take care of the rest.  They always do.

She presses her cheek against his.

A tiny finger goes to her lips.  

“Shhh…." she whispers into the dead man’s ear.  


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(special thanks to -dm-dark fey)

[crallbri]

Chapter Twelve


The Words of Armand LeBarthe;


‘Should’

‘Suffer’

‘Change’





''Citizens of Vallaki, for those that don't know my name, I am Armand, LeBarthe…''


The sharp-dressed man from Dementlieu was full of them.  Words.  Minus semantics, we were captivated by the man’s gestures.  The man from Dementlieu is meticulous in everything he does.  An orchestra of body parts and movement.  His hands.  His tongue.  His eyes and the muscles of his face.  Each gesture has its duty and its place.  Each finely tuned syllable serving some higher purpose--whatever purpose that may be.  
 
The crowd.  Reluctant at first, as he expected no doubt.  The dozens of invitations he had laboriously written and passed out all day, up and down Old Svalich Road, aroused some curiosity, even though we could see right away that he was another dandy from Dementlieu.  Once we finally found someone who could read the letter to us, (a young priestly man visiting from the Village of Barovia) the word spread quickly like snakes freshly hatched from their eggs, slithering this way and that way through the crooked streets of Vallaki.  (The man from Dementlleu is giving away food and cloths for free!)  Quite a stir this created, as you can imagine.  But beware.  Be aware that we are by and large a skeptical people.  That we don’t care much for foreigners, especially blue bloods.  The worst devils are those that smile far too often and easily.  We learn this early in life, some say within the womb.  Smiling blue bloods who parade their bleeding hearts before the "common" man and woman--whoever they may be.  And though most of us cannot read a lick, and you might think us dumb or plain, we know how to read the small print when it comes to anything “free.”  Nothing in this world is what it seems.  Not clothes.  Not food.  Nor words.  Bait on a hook.  And who are the fish?  We are.



“…I comes to you, as a simple man, who is concerned at what he’s seen, I wish to help you, help yourselves…”



A Barovian woman in a borderless black kerchief, sixty years etched into the lines of her face like leafless tree branches spread out against a winter sky, leans in and whispers into her husband’s ear.  ''Some say he is from Chateaufaux…somewhere in the distant lands of Dementlieu, or is it Mordent?
 
A father and son with loose matching cotton shirts and leathery skin stained with the guts of fish, dotted with silvery scales moistened by the dense fog in the Market Square, shake their heads in unison.  “Helpin’ us help ourselves is he?  Wha’ is it he think we do all day, everyday?  Loaf aroun’ catchin’ fancy words in our nets?  Words don’t feed folk.  Fish feed folk.”  

An old bow-legged man in rags with as many holes than not, exclaims to the two of them, ''Gawds!  Listen ta’ the good man, 'e gave me two hundred crow’s feet, just like that! I didn' ask him nuttin!, Praise th'Mornin'lord!”


Armand LeBarthe.  The simple man.  Helping us to help ourselves.  Nobody ever talks of these things and means it.  Not to us.  Not here.  Not like this.  Least of all out in the open for all to hear.  We know what to speak of and what not to speak of.  When and where.  The Gundarakite call this blood-remembering.  We know that the wolf howls the same old song, year in, year out.  Season after season.  Same rhyme, same reason.  



''…It breaks my heart, seeing de children starving, it really does, no children should suffer de hunger....no parent should be working three jobs, all day without seeing their children also, I wish to help you change that....''



A Gundarakite man, kerchief muted green, tied around an aged trunk of a neck, mumbles while chewing on a corn pipe.  ''I don' trust 'im...s' all damn politics I tell yer... an' th'tings 'e distributin' ...'ain' nothin' but ''bribes.''



''...Citizens of Vallaki, tis time we open our eyes and see, de hard reality -we- are in and realize we need eachother, we need to work together....”



A young Gundarakite woman with a heart-shaped face, basket in hand, kerchief muted yellow, whispers into a young Barovian boy’s ear.  “Ya’ hear that Leon.  The fop said ‘we’ be needin’ to learn how ta’ see and think propa’.”  



''...De Key of Progress tis knowledge and de ...window of knowledge tis Education ...every children should have de right to access knowledge, there lies de solution to most of de problems...''



Three Barovian widows, their kerchiefs black and tight, fold their arms in sync. ''Working with the Romulich family ya’ say?! Nah...I don't believe it...an’ whats he sayin’ bout’ educatin’ the youth.  Whats he mean by that?  Everythin’ anyone be needin’ to learn and know be in the home with the family.  Nuff’ said there.''

Words.  The sharp-dressed man from Dementlieu was full of them.  Armand LeBarthe.  The simple man.  The one with the broken heart.  The heart bleeding bread and roses.  The one who spoke these words to us; ‘should,’ ‘suffer,’ ‘change.’  Dangerous words for dangerous times.  Words best kept in private.  The Gundarakite, we know to keep these words safely tucked within the folds of our kerchiefs, concealed; muted yellow, green, and brown.  

Should.  Suffer.  Change.




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(a collaboration between Ferf and Eraldur)

[crallbri]

Chapter Thirteen



Rebels Rising


All that stood between life and death was a two story stone wall that circled center city.  The Burgomaster, the boyars, and their families were all huddled tight within their homes.  They predicted that they could hold this position for as long as the stockpiles lasted; a month, maybe two.  It was a matter of waiting as the remaining garrisons regained their footing and remobilized.  Fresh troops were also arriving by the day.  But the city of Teufeldorf could spare few without making themselves vulnerable to Ardonk Szerieza’s so-called “freedom fighters.”  Zeidenburg’s burgomaster would be haunted by this for the rest of his life—however long or short that may be.  Never trust a Gundarakite, he exclaimed to an audience of boyars.   The “Gundar-swine” are like poisonous vines creeping low across the land, concealed and meek within their kerchiefs until unfolded, turned loose, and explosive.  


It is easy to take for granted the rug beneath the feet once you become accustomed to not thinking twice about it.  Fourteen days ago the Burgomaster received a most ominous report.  The city’s eyes and ears had caught news of rebels rising.  When the boyars pleaded with the Burgomaster that same night to mobilize the city’s garrisons in preparation for the worst, he laughed in their faces, made some snide remark regarding the value of a Gundar-mule, and went back to eating his supper of spiced sarmale and vintage tsuika.  Come morning, by the time the cocks crowed, it was too late.  The rug had been pulled out from underneath him.  A good portion of the residential district was ablaze and littered with carnage.  


Nobody pays much mind to a Gundarakite.  If a Gundarakite is ordered to clean the shit from the road they just bob their heads submissively and play the roles written for them by the status quo.  “Yes sir, righ’ away, ya’ can count on me.”  Gundar-donkey.  Gundar-trash.  Gundar-mule.  This is what Barovians call them.  Not behind their backs mind you, but in earshot.  Especially in earshot.   Barovia’s beasts of burden.  The invisibles.  The untouchables.  The mules who prepare their meals, take out their trash, dig their ditches, sweep their floors, pick the grapes from the orchards, and harvest the fields of barley, wheat, and oats.  Work, work, work, and more work as their children’s ribs cling to deficient and hungry skin.


But for thirteen sleepless days and nights hungry Gundarakites raged guerilla warfare in the streets of Zeidenburg.  Their muted red, yellow, and green kerchiefs were unfolded.  Dark curly hair flung wild.  Their sharpened scythes stained with fresh sweet blue blood and the scent of burnt wheat.  They’d burn Zeidenburg to the ground and begin again.  A new chapter built upon the ruins of the old.      


Hundreds of zealous youth swarmed over the blood smeared streets.  They had set aside their ‘Gundar-mule’ scripts for thirteen days of liberty and terror.  In their chaos and freedom they ripped asunder all categories of time and space.  They built a giant pyre composed of all the furniture and bloated corpses they could muster from the mansions and high society homes of Barovian blue-bloods.  They would light a funeral pyre in Barovia’s most prosperous city for all to witness.  The fire of renewal would touch the sky.  They would burn a new story into the ruins of those institutions that imprisoned them, those invisible forces that pull at their bones and prematurely savage and scar both flesh and soul.  


A hornet’s nest of young rebels swarmed as two men made their way towards the unlit pyre.  Most of the faces in the crowd were eager and as ripe as plums in hot summer on the verge of bloom.   But here and there were stone chiseled faces of Duke Gundar’s ex-guard.  Seasoned men who after the Duke’s assassination found themselves suddenly plunged into economic despair.  These were men haunted by ghosts of glory.  Men clinging desperately to hopes and desires that distorted memories of old Gundarak beyond all true recognition and repair.  They killed and bled for a chimera of a past less real than dream.  But truth and facts matter little here if at all.  There is no past, no future, only now as an explosion of cheers ripped through the smoke as the rumor spread that one of the men was Ardonk Szerieza himself.  The buzzing swarm of youth opened up and closed around the two men as they moved to the center where a make shift platform stood before the unlit pyre.  


Hundreds of voices in unison exploded into the night air above the city.  “Gundarak!  Ardonk!   Gundarak!  Ardonk!  Gundarak!   Ardonk!”  Hundreds of unfolded kerchiefs, muted yellow, red, and green, swirled in the air over each head as they chanted.  Two effigies hung by ropes in the air above the make-shift platform; one in the likeness of the local Burgomaster, the other Count Strahd.  


Szerieza’s face was smooth and calm, his unfolded kerchief of muted green tied loosely around his neck.  The chanting storm shook him to the bone.  This was liberty!  The city trembled as if in labor.  Szerieza leapt atop a make-shift wooden platform then offered a firm hand to help his frail friend up.  He and his gaunt faced companion stood under the hanging effigies.  For a while they watched the sea of unfolded kerchiefs swirl in the free air beneath them and all around.  The violet summer sky flashed with heat lightning as the young chanted “Gundarak!  Ardonk!  Gundarak!  Ardonk!”  Szerieza held high into the air a shiny black raven’s feather.  The crowd fell silent as a low rumble of thunder shook the surrounding mountains of Dreadmount.  


“Fellow Gundarakite!  Today!  These streets are ours!”  The sea erupted with a violent cheer.  “Gundarak!   Ardonk!  Gundarak!  Ardonk!”  Szerieza raised the raven’s feather and all went still again.  The two hanging effigies overhead slowly rotated under the invisible force of the wind.  “There is no future!  There is no past!  The essence of our domain is now!!”  The sea erupted with the pounding of calloused palms and bleeding knuckles against the proud skin of hearts.  


“Today!   Fellow Gundarakite!  I bring you news from the east!  From Vallaki I bring you Baltasar!”  The sea roared again as a gaunt faced man stepped forward on the platform.  Before the torture, Baltasar possessed an uncanny likeness to Szerieza, often posing as a double to confuse the enemy as to Szerieza’s true location.  Stocky, broad-shouldered, thick dark curls of hair that fell just short of the shoulder; a classic Gundarakite mustache and build.  But now his body was as frail and tattered as a ship’s skeleton wrecked upon jagged rock.  Baltasar’s arms and legs were tooth picks.  His once thick curly hair mostly fallen out revealing irregular balding spots.  The skin over his cheek bones were taut and stretched thin.  Any remaining likeness between the two was now one of mere spirit.  Szerieza placed the raven’s black feather into Baltasar’s weak and bone-like hand.  All went quiet save the wind that whipped at the torch flames waving back and forth in the night air all around them.  The hanging effigies of the Burgomaster and the Devil Strahd kept bumping into one another a few feet above Baltasar’s head.    


“I…am…Baltasar.”  His words came slow, barely scraping over a bruised and purple tongue.  Torture never leaves one the same as before.  Szerieza’s sympathetic hand went to the man’s shoulder.  Baltasar’s chapped lips smiled weakly at him then gently removed his hand.  His chest rose and his rib cage expanded as he strained to breathe deep before speaking again to the crowd before him.  “I bring to you…an urgent message…from our brothers and sisters in Vallaki.”  As if touched by the spirit of the man he once was, his words steadily began to thunder and vibrate in the smoke hovering over the crowd.  “And this…is…their message…to you.”  

“Damn it all! All Strahd's Barovia stinks of shit!”

The sea erupted with a swirling of red, green, and yellow kerchiefs unfolded as Baltasar’s words struck down like lightening from above.

”You whoreson dog, Strahd, come! Let’s to music!
We have no life save when the swords clash.
But ah! When we see Gundarakite opposing
And the broad fields beneath us turn crimson,
Then howl our hearts nigh mad with rejoicing!

In Zeidenburg we have great rejoicing!
When the tempests shakes all of old Gundarak,
And the lightning from black skies flash crimson,
And the fierce thunder roars us their music
And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing,
And through all the riven skies Gundarakites rise!  Rebels Rising!”

The swarming sea of swirling red, yellow, and green kerchiefs thundered in response: “Rebels Rising!  Rebels Rising!”  

”Hells grant soon we hear again the swords clash!
And the shrill neighs of destriers in battle rejoicing,
Spiked beast to spiked breast opposing!
Better one hour's liberty than a lifetime of Strahd’s shit,
With boyars, burgomasters, and frail music!
Bah! There’s no wine like the blood’s crimson! Rebels Rising!”

The frenzied crowd erupted in response: “Rebels Rising!  Rebels Rising!”  

“And we love to see the sun rise blood-crimson, rebels rising!
And I watch Gundarakite spears through the dark clash
And it fills all hearts with rejoicing
And pries wide our mouths with fast music
When we see Gundarakites scorn and defy him,
His lone might ‘gainst all Gundarakite opposing, rebels rising!”

The youth began to swarm like a whirlpool around the unlit pyre as they howled at the moon: “Rebels Rising!  Rebels Rising!”  

“The Gundarakite who fears war and squats opposing
Our words for stour, hath no blood of crimson
But is fit only to rot in Strahd’s shit
Far from where worth’s won and the sword’s clash
For the death of such sluts I go rejoicing;
Yea, I fill all the air with my music! Rebels rising!

Ardonk’s body guard strained to form a tight circle around the make-shift platform as the sea of Gundarakite become more turbulent.  The wind raged as the torches flickered and twirled over the heads in the crowd.  The wind was ripping at the straw of the effigies overhead.

“Gundarakite, rebels rise, to the music!
There’s no sound like to swords opposing,
No cry like the battle’s rejoicing
When our elbows and swords drip the crimson
And out charge ‘gainst Barovia rush clash.
May Gundarakites damn for ever all who cry Strahd!

And let the music of Rebels Rising make them crimson!
Hells grant soon we hear again the swords clash!
Hells blot black for always the thought of Strahd’s Gundarak!”


As the fiery speech came to a climatic pitch the sea of youth began to overflow with raw emotion.  Torches from every direction began to fly through the night sky into the unlit pyre.  Wind whipped at the flames as the pyre exploded into a violent furnace that lit the night sky for miles in every direction.  Baltasar, drained, fell limp into the arms of Ardonk and his personal guard.  They struggled to open a safe passage through the violent mass of Gundarakite passions unfolded.  The flames roared as young rebels swarmed the streets dragging two burning effigies until morning came.


The Burgomaster, the boyars, and their families found no sleep.  But come morning the Burgomaster would receive a most unexpected message.  Ardonk Szerieza and his “freedom fighters” had gone underground.  Their kerchiefs refolded, their former scripts as “Gundar-donkeys” resumed.  There was no evidence save two charred effigies, blood stained streets, and the scorched remains of a funeral pyre that for the Gundarakite would come to symbolize the beginning of the end of Strahd’s Gundarak.  




----------------------------------------------------
(Baltasar's speech is an adaptation of an Ezra Pound poem.  Any feedback is appreciated.)

Edit: I better clarify.  By feedback I mean something relevant to the writing itself.  (looks to the post below) Goofball.

ferf

[deDani]

You've been spending more time on the forums than you've playing judging by the unending stream of words here.

Didnt mean to Spam. very sorry, terribly sorry

[Heretic]

You've been spending more time on the forums than you've playing judging by the unending stream of words here.

This is spam, isn't it? am I the only one thinking that?

Anyhow, I love these stories Ferf. Amazing.

[Maryn]

// ESPECIALLY love this last post.  

[EO]

Simply great stuff. No more, no less.

[kowasu]

I love this character. She was my first experience with the server. I was in Tigen's Rest with my... uh.. preist Magna Dias blabbing away about info he learned about Ardonk Snzeiza from the abridge history of Gundarakite book. IC and OOC I didn't have any idea about her being a Gundarakite.
 Hentin Dalennes is extremely curious about her. "Ah think she guts tellin me to scrub me gums with bleach..." (his wooden teeth are starting to turn brown)

[crallbri]

A New Friend

Chapter 14
Part I


Maybe it had nothing to do with compassion at all.  But when the man’s tongue slurped Anna’s ear, his words slurring “bitch….git’ me anotha’ ale,” something inside of Gibrana, let loose.  

“Hit me!” she snapped at the man.  His hairy hands leached after the young barmaid.  Anna, trey in hand, apron worn thin, spun, deflecting the man’s grasp.  She gave her new friend (most call her Rodika; it is for their own good) a startled look.  “Rodika” she spoke through clenched teeth with a forced smile, “he be jus’…part…of the job…he aint no botha’.”  Anna was a terrible liar.  But men, when lust fills their loins, will believe in just about anything.

Gibrana took a step forward, placing herself between Anna and the leech.  “Shut your trap an’ give the good clean air a moment’s rests would ya!  Make yourself useful for once!  Hit me!”  

She heard a sudden voice in her head.  “Did ya’ just tell him to hit ya’?!”   But before she could answer the voice in her head, the drunkard stepped forward, his fat lower lip looming over the little peasant woman.  His lower lip hung low towards the blubber of his belly.  She hated that drooping lip.  Her coal black eyes couldn’t look away from the U shaped worm-lip.  She felt like digging her nails into it and giving it a good yank, but then that would mean he’d never shut his trap wouldn’t it.  Can you imagine?  A boisterous witless git whose mouth, always pried open wide, becomes a lidless toilet full of shit.  A swarm of flies cries for mercy.

“Whuz tha’ ya’ jus’ say ya’ crazy Gundarakite bitch!?”

His hot breath on the skin of her face reminded her of the steam that rises from the fresh dung pile at the Ostevik’s.  His thick fingers flexed and cracked like hot walnuts at his side.

“I said…,” she tilted her heart shaped face to the side, her round olive cheek inviting him, daring him to comply, “…hit me ya’ fat! Worthless!  Whoreson of a feck!”

The motley array of patrons at Tigan’s Rest fell silent at the drop of a hat.  All heads turned just as bone hard knuckles cracked her round soft nose into a bloody pulp.  Gibrana’s vision went blurry.  The man’s face loomed clownish, as if his face-paint smeared into a grin of eternal stupidity.  She held her tiny hand under her nose.  Fat drops of rich blood filled her palm.  And then, she began to laugh.  Her laughter resounded in Tigan’s like some old bare ruined choir whose prayers were just answered.  The kind of laugh one hears when they find a most unexpected treasure.  The laugh of the hustler, or the whore, or the priest, or the philosopher king.  The laugh of those who have been searching their entire lives for their lost lover, or god, or goddess, or some intangible nameless quality.  Then they wake and realize they have been asleep the entire time, and that their lover is lying next to them in the warm bed.

She wiped her nose with her sleeve.  Then she turned the other cheek.  Maybe it had nothing to do with compassion.  But then again, maybe it did.  “Now hit me again, but this time….do it for real.”  

The man, either because he was too drunk to care, or too drunk and tired to stay focused on anything for any extended period of time, was already making his way through the seedy throng.  Zina tossed a wet towel to Anna who wasted no time in attending to her friend.  

“Rodika, why ya’ go an’ do tha’ for?  Nothin’ gonna stop him from bein’ a prick.  He be like tha’ all the time.  Jus’ part of the job he is.”  Anna applied the wet rag to Gibrana’s chin.  The blood spilt down over the corners of her tiny mouth.

Gibrana’s creeping smile flipped into a frown as her bleeding nose began to throb with pain, as her adrenaline began to wane.

“Feck if I know Anna.  Don’t ya’ jus’ get in one of them moods sometimes?  When ya’ feel trapped?  Suffocated in your own skin?  An’ ya’ jus’ feel compelled ta’….ta’…”

Anna finished her sentence.  “…ta’ get the snot beat out of ya?”  

They both laughed as Anna wiped the blood from Gibrana’s chin.  

Anna continued.  “Anyways, my shift be ova’ soon, unless if Zina says otha’ wise.  Ya’ wanna’ get a bite ta’ eat an’ a drink then love?”

Holding her head far back, chin raised high, pieces of torn cloth jammed up each bloody nostril, Gibrana grinned ear to ear and nodded.


---------------------------------------------------------------
(The character of Anna played by DM Lycan)

[crallbri]

Chapter 14
Part II

Amen to the Revolution


And so it is that fool hardy men misplace their faith in the metals and muscle of the day.  Unbeknown to many is that the entire time they battle outward, the true monsters are towards the within.  And so it is that we die, and that we die, and that we die everyday.  Our skin flakes, grows old, and falls away from our brittled bones and body beyond the scope of our powers and vision.  Time marches on indifferent to our plight or play.  But do not lose heart!  Let us not fail to joyfully participate in the sorrows of our days.  

The Barovian sun is always up for it.  For at this very instant, the sun is prying open the night’s sweet thighs as if it is their first time.  Such a beautiful lie!  We repeat, we repeat, we repeat ourselves again.  Why count the minutes, hours, and days?  The Night trembles and shakes, her darkness spreads her legs, her lips part.  She’d tell the sun to bugger off.  “But what’s the use?” she says. “The sun is a sham; a most benevolent or malicious one depending on the weather.”  Does happiness always demand that we lie to those we share our beds with?  I don’t presume to know, but I will say this:  Let the dice roll.  

The night takes the sun between her thighs and while he beats his own chest she lets her imagination roam loose in the shadows of the day until the sun, worn out and wobbly, falls from crimson sky like some dead spent saint.  A prophet once told me that the wind is the moon's imagination wandering. It seeps through cracks, ripples the grass, explores the unknown.  And the farmers below, the widows, and the young all give the sun his undue praise while night darkens, and the wind blows and the leaf trembles.  Truth is veiled and made mute by the light of day.  Truth in her monstrous shape slips from the shadows into the open fields of sunless day.  We can shut the shutters.  We can bar the doors.   But, we can not shut out the terror that resides within.  Do not be fooled.  

A man is sitting at Tigan’s Rest tonight.  Zina has filled her purse with the man’s loneliness, which she has measured out by the pint.  The man is oblivious to the fact that his broad knuckles are still stained red from the young Gundarakite girl’s nose he hammered but a few pints ago.  Three pints ago he nailed Gibrana in the nose.  Fifty pints ago he saw his oldest son pass him on the road with mute contempt.  While some 1000 pints or so ago he lost the family farm to the Devil’s Law and his boyar scum.  How does a man lose his farm?  Well, he doesn’t.  It is a clever trick of words to dull the painful fact and truth that it’s the Devil Strahd’s Law that robs the cloths off our backs.  No one owns a thing in Barovia, unless if they’ve a piece of paper that says so signed by the Devil's cohort; Burgomaster Iloneus.  To lose your farm!  To lose your husband!  To lose your dignity!  Euphemisms!  Our minds are riddled with tricks, draped by the language of power that obscures and dictates.  Euphemisms mask a truth too monstrous for comfort.  Euphemsisms protect the powers that be.  May Zina’s tap never run dry!  What an awful story this man would bellow if only he was sober enough to try.  May your lives be consumed and medicated, liquored, filtered by euphemisms, and masked by the sarcasm that binds you!

Was that why Gibrana offered up her nose to the man’s lonely fist?  Was she trying to save him from himself?  Or was it more selfish?  Perhaps we will never know.  What I do know is this:  While the cartilage of her nose was being crushed, the pain afforded her a moment of lucidity.  Everything came into focus; the past, the present, the future.  The Euphemisms and the duality of time and space that draped her mind fell to the side and she was witness to the ineffable.  Amen to the revolution.

[crallbri]

The What Should Not Be

The tracks in the snow were disappearing as quickly as an orgasm.  Coarse snow flakes pelted the motionless spruce, bouncing everywhere to a soft landing.  And he was grateful.  The only thing left to do now was burry the memory of the what should not be.  And that would require vodka and some sleep.

Elfric Zsovosky’s muted red kerchief shielded his face from the wind, but not the icy cold.  He’d sacrifice his left nut to never have to see what he had seen this morning.  Broken bones littered the white woods.  Not the bones of the recently deceased.  No.  These were the bones of the what should not be.  These were the bones of Barovians from days of old.  Many of whom no doubt died during the nine month bloody siege on the former nation of Gundarak.  He stifled a laugh at a thought.  It wasn’t unusual to wish a Barovian dead, especially a blue blooded fop or a Devil’s guard, but to wish them dead again, that was a new one.

Elfric’s feet, layered in broken-in padded leathers, stepped softly, as his father had taught him when on the hunt.  But who was the hunter in these woods?  Certainly not him.  His arrow notched and ready, a hunter’s tools used for false comfort. 

Weary brown eyes scanned the horizon out of habit.  Do the dead breathe?  When on the hunt, or on the run from soldiers, a man’s breath was like a misty flag saying “here I am.” 

The air here was icy still, save the icy pellets that hailed from above.  It was soundless except for the ice pellets bouncing off the branches overhead.  No wind rustled the pine needles.  The white silence spoke volumes to the Gundarakite.  The mink, the otter, the stag, the owl and the raven were all signs of normalcy, were all anchors to sanity.  But the woods this morning gave no comfort of familiarity.  The mink, the otter, the stag and deer, the owl and the raven were gone.  And the vacuum left behind was deafening.

The morning began normal enough; cold, a mild hang-over, with not much else to do but visit his sister’s grave to scold her, even in death, for her womanly foolishness.  As he left the cobble walls of Vallaki, the guard’s eyes hot on his back, a darkness blacker than sin fell over the land surrounding the temple of the Morninglord.  At first he thought he was struck with natural blindness.  It was either that, or fathom that the entire world had just blown out as a candle’s flame.  But not a moment later the clamor of battle metal rang out.  Somewhere behind him, a guard shouted to his men to “seal the gates, secure the wall!!” and the heavy oaken doors slammed shut. 

He crouched low and moved in the direction he had last seen Cezar’s before darkness descended.  The darkness dissipated in strange clumps, revealing outlanders, half a dozen or so, shining bright in the morning sun.  An outlander man began beating his blade to his shield, singing boastfully as a horde of what should not be spewed forth from the ruinous temple of the Morninglord. 

Elfric’s trembling hand barely managed to knock his first arrow.  Amazement rounded his eyes as outlanders, one as small as a child, engaged the ghastly horde.  He could recognize some of the dead, distinguished by their armor of rusting chains baring emblems of the Devil, Count Strahd.  His arrows had pierced such armor before.  As he let his arrow fly towards its mark, he could only hope that piercing the armor again would do some good.  Time seemed to slow as he watched his arrow rip through the icy air towards death itself.  The arrow struck with impotency.  The arrow pierced true, but the soldier, his flesh decayed, his yellow fingernails long and twisted, his white hair curling through empty eye sockets, stood unscathed.  The fiend turned slowly and faced Elfric.  The undead soldier, as he had no doubt done so many times in the line of duty, lowered its halberd and began a slow trot towards Elfric.  Elfric Zsovosky, his father’s proud son inch for inch, lost no time or honor in running in the opposite direction.

He ran and ran and ran until he could run no more.  He crawled under an old pine to catch his breath.  Lost, he was.  But not lost in space and time.  No.  He was lost in spirit.  The Gundarakite are as much a part of the land as the wolf and deer.  What he had lost was his anchor, his bond to ‘normalcy.’ His mind’s reality had been wrenched loose like a toy ship upon a vast ocean storm.

“Elfric” whispered a man’s voice with a luktar accent.  Elfric’s breath caught in his throat.  A man, slightly thinner but with the bold brow and dark eyes of a Gundarakite, stepped cautiously out from behind a tree.  Elfric’s anchor to normalcy began to reestablish itself. 

Stefano sensed that the woods were not as they should be.  His dark eyes scanned the tree lines as he spoke.  “Sum’ foul witchery or somefen’ be ‘bout.  Le’s ge’ goin’.  The othas’ be tired of waitin’ on us both.  Word come tis mornin’ afta’ ya’ lef’.  Blue bloods is havin’ a hissy fit, demandin’ tha’ the guard set up check points ta’ keep a closer eye on Gundarakites an’ outlandas.  We hav’ some plannin’ ta’ get to.”

Elfric just nodded, without feeling or showing much concern.  He could understand, even appreciate the predictable evil brought down upon him and his kin by the Devil and his soldiers.  He’d face any peril, so long as it was comprehendable.

“Wha’ happen to yus’?” Stefano asked.

“Don’t ask Stefano.  Jus’ forget ‘bout it.  Jus’ be sure the nex’ soldier we plant a volley of arrows in, dies and stays tha’ way.”

Stefano nodded and replied “for Dawn an’ Gundarak I will.” 

“For Dawn an’ Gundarak” Elfric repeated and the two men made their way towards Vallaki.

[Nefensis]

// damn you.. we wanna know what happened to Gibrana..

[Iconoclast]

The Devil's Unfiroms


Old and young, man and woman, united under one cause; Szabadsag!  For Dawn and Gundarak, the Sons of Gundar would shed the blood of their oppressor by morning.  The fresh snow paved and cushioned their hurried steps.  The barren limbs of the plum trees were coated in white ice, indifferent to the hot blood that pumped through their veins; indifferent to the recent massacre of Gundarakite children, the images engraved into their collective memory.  Hope drove them onward, towards the western gates of Vallaki where they expected to find their mark, the oppressive symbols of the Devil Strahd; the Vallaki guard.


“If it is revenge that you rebels want, then I am prepared” spoke the young outlander, with a mouthful of warm blood.  He showed some spine, considering that he could be approaching his last breath.  Then again, there is a fine line between courage and blind terror in such moments as these.  One can easily pass for the other.  No matter the age, no matter the ethnicity, or place of origin, he wore the Devil’s uniform; he was a Devil’s man.  The room felt crowded, and stuffy despite the deep cold outside.  Damaged crates, with molding wooden sides, were sprawled along the damp cellar walls. 

A lean man, with a muted red kerchief tied just under coal-black eyes, squatted down in front of him.  “So why do ya’ do it?  Why do ya’ do the Devil’s biddin?  For fang?”  The faded kerchief muffled his words, as other rebels, garbed similarly in rustic reds and muted greens paced, and observed. 

“I’ve not received one coin.  Not paid once yet.  Ya’ think they’re gonna’ come for me?  An outlanda?”  The man had a point.  He also seemed to believe that he was serving the greater good in his service to the Devil Strahd.  Coal black eyes studied the outlander through the slits in the kerchief as he spoke.  “Children were hacked ta’ bits righ’ before their ma’ma’s an’ pa’pa’s eyes.  If ya’ nay be murderin’ good simple folk for coin, then wha’ be yer motivation outlander?” 

Silence.  Silence as coal black eyes scrutinized the young man’s quiet, stubborn resolve.  “I leave ya’ with these parting words for now.  Be wary of the choices tha’ ya’ make outlanda.’  The Dawn be a’comin’.  Rebels be risin’ to reclaim the lands of Old Gundarak.  We care not for Vallaki, or the lands of Barovia.  But we do care for our liberty, for the righ’ ta’ live free from the Devil Strahd.  Any man or woman wearin’ the Devil’s uniform will nay stand between us an’ the Dawn of our liberty.  For Dawn an’ Gundarak, we accept wha’ eva’ sacrifice may be.  Be wary of who ya’ pay your allegiance ta’ in these lands outlanda.  Your uniform be the Devil's; your service be to the Devil's wicked deeds.”

[Iconoclast]

Barovian Devils; The Betrayal of the Outlander

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   Ellfric Zsivosky put his ear to the back door, and held his breath to listen.  The spring rain and the harsh whipping winds outside howled quietly.  The grave digger Miklos, his sly old uncle Zeteny, the blacksmith’s son Fredek, and the priestess of the Morninglord, Katalin, tied their muted red and green kerchiefs around their faces, hastily concealing their identities, and drawing their weapons.  No one comes to knock upon their doors.  None should be here, unless if their worst fears proved true, and the outlander had betrayed them all, betrayed their struggle for Dawn and Gundarak. 

  “Wha’ ya’ hear!?” came a worried hushed voice from the back room.  Ellfric held his palm up and swatted, signaling to be quiet. 

   Ellfric jumped back in surprise as tiny fingers desperately squeezed through the space between the bottom of the door and the floor.  The fingers were that of a child’s, and the fingernails dirty with dried blood.  “Please!” cried a young boy through the crack.  Ellfric swiftly unbolted the door, peaked his head out to look both ways on the cobble street, and then hauled the boy indoors before slamming and locking the door again.  As soon as the boy’s feet touched the ground again, he collapsed to the floor like a bird that died in flight. 

“Katalin!” shouted Ellfric, “I need you!”

   Katalin rushed through the open doorway to the fallen boy, falling to her knees, one hand hovering an inch above the boy’s forehead, the other hand softly pressed to the boy’s chest.  She lifted her eyes to the ceiling as she began to speak to the Morninglord; her eyes fixed upon the air above her as if she saw the Dawn Giver’s bloodied face looking down.  “Dawn giver!, we plead tha’ this youn’ boy’s body an’ mind be healed by the ligh’ tha’ shines from within an’ without.’  Dawn giver!  We plead tha’ this young body an’ mind be alleviated of pain, so tha’ he may suffer usefully, an’ serve among us in your name.  Dawn giver!  We who are not worthy ta’ receive you accept your Will as our own.”  As the Gundarakite priestess spoke the last word of her prayer, the boy began to cough up blood upon his dry dehydrated lips; his eyes fluttered as he struggled to focus on the faces hovering above him, looking down at him with a mixture of fear, relief, and confusion.  Katalin took her kerchief, dabbed it with water from her canteen, and proceeded to gently wipe the blood from the boy’s mouth and chin.  The boy’s skin was scraped and scarred, as if he had run through a patch of rose bushes.  His tattered clothes looked as if he’d been wearing them for weeks.  She gave the boy a reassuring, sympathetic smile. 

   “So many,” the boy began to speak, “pa’pa yelled at me to run!  Told me ta’ get clear, ta’ come here!  The Devils!  They came by night!  So many!  The Devil’s guards!”  The boy’s gaunt tiny frame shook as he wept.  Ellfric squatted over the boy, and brushed back the boy’s dark hair from his teary eyes.  “Shhh...ya’ be wit’ friends now son” spoke Ellfric, “the Devil can nay touch ya’ here, not wit’ us wit’ ya’.  Ya’ done good lad, jus’ like yer pa’pa wanted ya’ to do.”  Fredek, his bulky arms folded over his chest, shook his head, a cynical expression if there ever was one.  Ellfric’s coal black eyes shot him a hot glare as the boy continued. 

   “Sullan Camp…all of ‘em…dead!…everyone!” shouted the boy, overwhelmed.  Everyone’s eyes stared wildly at the young boy in disbelief.  Then, as if swept away in an avalanche of emotion, the boy’s eyes closed, and his limbs fell limp.  Katalin’s fingers rushed to the boy’s neck.  The boy had lost his father and mother, and just about everyone who loved him, as she had once been orphaned too.  Her heart swelled with old memories.  “He’s still alive” she said.  “Fredek, please take the boy to the couch up stairs.”  Fredek, with a face marked by a perpetual scowl, scooped the exhausted boy into his brawny arms and effortlessly carried the boy upstairs, Katalin on his heels. 

   “Ya’…ya’ thi..think tha’..sh..she..t..told ‘em..” stuttered Miklos Sebok, his eyes still wide with dismay.  Zeteny, no stranger to suffering the slaughter of loved ones by the Barovian Devils, sighed and shook his graying head.  “Traitorous bitch!” shouted Ellfric over Miklos’ stuttering.  “Neva’ trus’ an outlanda!” he continued shouting as he stormed up the stairs, the others soon to follow. 

   Upstairs, Gotz’s tail wagged excitedly to the side of the boy, sweeping across the smooth wood planked floor.  Katalin squeezed a wet kerchief over the boy’s lips, keeping them moist.  Fredek towered near the couch, his scowl statuesque, arms folded, eyes fixed on the blazing fire place.  Ellfric, Miklos, and Zeteny paced, occasionally stopping to look upon the unconscious boy’s face. 

   “We shoul’ hav’ killed her,” spoke Fredek, his expression unchanging. 
   “Ay’ Fredek, we should hav,” Ellfric replied, “The moment she trusted her ‘gut,’ an’ took herself outa’ hidin’ for her own selfish purposes, we shoul’ hav’ either killed her, or boxed her up an’ shipped her as far West as possible ta’ keep her mouth shut.  We knew her foolishness coul’ result in a massacre but we let her live outa’ some fecked up sense of morals!”

   “Uh huh…ne..neva’..trust an ou..outlanda” chimed Miklos, with everyone nodding in agreement. 

   “So we have to assume that if wha’ this boy speaks is true, tha’ all who were at Sullan Camp hav’ been,” Zeteny paused a moment and swallowed, “slain.”  Dark silence.  The unbearable quiet as hope breathes her last breath.  Gotz, sensing the dire mood, lied down, resting his furry chin upon the floor by the couch. 

   The boy began to cough, jolting everyone to attention.  His lungs sounded raw, his coughing coarse and dry.  His thin body, showing signs of being food deprived, shook violently with each cough.  Ellfric’s eyebrows furrowed.  Fredek continued staring sternly into the fire.  Miklos and Zeteny exchanged worried looks.  Katalin lowered her head, and then the boy went deathly still.  Gotz stood up, and then began to lick the boy’s face.  Silence.  Helpless to prevent another Gundarakite child’s death to the Devil. 

   Ellfric hurled a dart into the portrait of Strahd on the wall, breaking the dark spell that held them all.  “We’ve been betrayed.  Inform tha’ others.  We’re relocatin’ tonight.  We’ll not give the Devil’s pricks the pleasure of spillin’ any more Gundarakite blood this day.”

   “We mus’ see tha’ this boy is cleansed an’ buried propa’” insisted Katalin.

   “See to it then, an’ be quick” spoke Ubul as he entered the room, flinging his cloak aside.  “Then return promptly, we’ve no time ta’ spare.” 


(A special thanks to Talek for his role as faction dm and Ubul Szierza)

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The Sullan Valley Massacre

    Why would they do it?  Why would they trust an outlander?  Out of desperation?   Impatient to be out from under the Devil Strahd’s thumb?   The iconic statue of the Morninglord had been pondered upon, the visage’s hidden meaning revealing itself to the Gundarakite rebellion as they fought their oppressors.  The coming Dawn promised by the Morninglord and his prophet would herald the liberation of Gundarak.  This was certain to be.  But this Dawn, like everything else under the sun, would not come to be without sacrifice.  The bloody face of the Morninglord signified this truth.  But whose sacrifice?  Sacrifice of self, of others, or both?  This has yet to be agreed upon.  Late into deep night, locked within their underground shelters, hidden from the enemy, deep in enemy country, heated Gundarakite voices debate these pragmatic philosophical questions, like the buzz of a hornets nest just before exploding. 


    What could temp these Gundarakites, who have been bred and taught to be wary of otherness, to trust an outlander with the lives of hundreds, nay thousands of their kin?  As the winter snow melted, and the spring sun began to warm the ground, the hundreds of Gundarakite corpses began to thaw.  And with the thaw, the heat of the sun’s shine seemed to summon forth the stench of decay.  The blue flesh of hundreds of corpses, their limbs having been butchered by the halberds of Vallaki’s Militia, sprouted up alongside new green blades of grass.  The rotting, maggot eaten flesh upon broken limbs stood in stark contrast to the green foliage of Spring, as tree limbs sprouted buds up above.  They worked in pairs, most kept to silence, their muted red and green kerchiefs were of little use against the smell of death.  Perhaps they felt they should suffer these horrible visages and unforgettable odors.  They could recognize kin and old friends among the dead.  Guilt walked hand and hand with each of them, as they hurled rotting bodies into the mass grave.  The Militia had left their brethren to rot, but it was they who trusted the outlander.  It was they who brought her to Sullan Camp when she was in need of safety from the Devil Strahd’s militia. 


     A small statue of the Moringlord stood slender upon a rock, overseeing the mass grave as lifeless bodies piled up.  The sun sailed quietly through the blue sky overhead towards its western harbor.  A shard of light illuminated the fey features of the iconic statue.  For a xenophobic people, how odd it is that so many would flock to the Morninglord.  The pointy ears, the angular jaw, the face with high cheek bones, and the slender build.  So unlike the stocky, barrel chested Gundarakite.  Is that why they did it?  Did they believe that they would have to overcome their xenophobia before the Morninglord found them worthy of freedom and salvation?  It is difficult to say.  But it is unlikely that any of those who survived the Sullan Massacre would dare to trust an outlander again.  As each stood around the mass grave, with hundreds of broken twisting bodies below, the theological uncertainties that troubled them ceased as the guilt overwhelmed the moment, drowning out all else.  Deep rooted guilt and the vines of revenge and justice become seamless when entwined.  They were to blame for the Sullan Valley Massacre. 

    Only an oath and its fulfillment could redeem them now, swore Ellfric Zsivosky as his coal black eyes fixed upon a hand among the carnage below.  The hand seemed to be reaching, as if even in death, the Gundarakite were still reaching out; dead, but not dead to hope.  Dead, but not dead to the need for justice, revenge.  Dead, but not dead for Dawn an' Old Gundarak.